Monte Vista University artist in residence apparently commits suicide-but some say it might have been murder

Don't worry, Nobel Prize winning economics professor Henry Spearman is on the case. The news account says:

"Spearman has accepted an invitation to lecture at Monte Vista University here in San Antonio. He comes in the wake of a puzzling art heist with plans to teach a course on art and economics. Now there is the alleged suicide of womanizing artist-in-residence Tristan Wheeler. But Wheeler had serious enemies.

Henry Spearman has a knack for solving crimes. He is considering the following questions in his investigation.

Was Wheeler killed by a jilted lover, a cuckolded husband, or a beleaguered assistant? Could there have been a connection between Wheeler's marketability and his death? What are the parallels between a firm's capital and an art museum's collection? What does the market say about art's authenticity versus its availability? And what is the mysterious "death effect" that lies at the heart of the case?"

If this sounds like a murder mystery, that's because it is. It is the plot of The Mystery of the Invisible Hand: A Henry Spearman Mystery by Marshall Jevons. It takes place in San Antonio and Monte Vista University bears a striking resemblance to Trinity University.

Marshall Jevons is just the pen name of the two co-authors, William Breit and and Kenneth G. Elzinga. Marshall Jevons is a fictitious crime writer invented and used by William L. Breit and Kenneth G. Elzinga, professors of economics at Trinity University, San Antonio and the University of Virginia, respectively (Wikipedia).

The name combines the names of two actual economists from the 19th century, William Stanley Jevons and Alfred Marshall. They have written three other Henry Spearman novels.

The sad news is that William Breit passed away in 2011. He once attended San Antonio College as a student (in the early 1950s). I think his economics teacher here was Truett Chance, the man for whom the building I teach in is named.