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HARTSVILLE, S.C. – March 3, 2011 – An essay by Coker College English Professor Rhonda Knight, titled “Identity, Simulacra, and the Hyperreal: Detectives, Murderers, and Victims,” appears in a new book about the lifework of internationally acclaimed novelist Martha Grimes.

Edited by renowned Embry-Riddle University scholar Sara Fogel and published by McFarland, the collection is titled “Martha Grimes Walks Into a Pub: Essays on a Writer with a Load of Mischief” and includes ten critical essays that are principally focused on the Richard Jury, Emma Graham and Andi Oliver series.

Since the 1979 discovery of her work in a slush pile at Little, Brown – one of the United Kingdom’s leading book publishers – Martha Grimes has published more than thirty books, won a Nero Wolfe Award for her detective series and developed a following of readers whose loyalty translates to repeated stays on the best-sellers lists.

The essays included in Fogel’s collection address the novelist’s themes of parental abandonment, loneliness, obsession, greed, mistaken and dual identity, the resilience of children, stunted romantic relationships and animal cruelty. They attend, in particular, to her engaging characters, strong sense of place and the comedy, which feature strongly in Grimes’ books.

Knight is chair of the Department of Communication, Language and Literature at Coker College and directs the college’s Liberal Arts Studies Program.  She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a Master of Arts degree from the University of Alabama and a doctorate from the Binghamton University.

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Coker College readies undergraduates for personal and professional success through a distinctive four-year program that emphasizes a practical application of the liberal arts as well as hands-on and discussion-based learning within and beyond the classroom. Coker is ranked among the “Best Colleges” in the South by U.S.
News & World Report as well as The Princeton Review. Located in Hartsville, S.C., Coker is within two hours of the cultural, financial and recreational resources of Charlotte, Columbia, Charleston and Myrtle Beach.