Ever thought about writing a campus novel? I often play with plots but never get around to the writing. And I get stuck on endings, just as I do when I write an academic paper! I recently dipped into my cabinet of unrealised ideas and pulled out…

Title: “Attribution”

The book examines how institutional failures can transform victims into perpetrators, the corrupting nature of revenge, the vulnerability of academic careers to systemic abuse, and the question of whether destroying a broken system is justified if it harms innocent people caught up in it. The academic setting allows for crimes that are intellectually sophisticated but emotionally devastating, destroying someone’s life’s work and reputation rather than their physical safety. The insular nature of academia makes both the original crime and the revenge particularly intimate and psychologically complex.

Protagonist: Dr. Amara Stene-Smith, a soft-spoken but determined postdoctoral researcher in environmental science whose groundbreaking work on carbon sequestration was stolen by her supervisor.

The theft: Amara discovers that Professor Richard Blackwood, her supposedly supportive supervisor and mentor, has published her research under his own name in a high-impact journal. When she confronts him, he claims the work was “collaborative” and that as principal investigator, he has publication rights. The paper launches him to international recognition and an enormous philanthropic gift to continue the research.

The failed system: Amara files a formal plagiarism complaint with the university’s research integrity office  but these are dismissed due to Blackwood’s influence and “collaborative research” loopholes in the plagiarism policy. The journal refuses to investigate without institutional backing. Amara’s complaint to her professional organisation experiences bureaucratic delays and eventual dismissal.

But each rejection is accompanied by subtle retaliation – her unpaid fellowship isn’t renewed, conference abstracts are rejected, and she’s quietly blacklisted from academic positions.

The plan: Eighteen months later and now working as a barista, Amara decides on systematic revenge against everyone involved in the theft of her work. She creates multiple fake academic identities and begins her campaign.

Target 1 – The journal editor: Dr. Patricia Holbrook, who refused to investigate. Amara submits fabricated studies under false names that mirror Holbrook’s own research interests. Once published, she exposes them as fraudulent, destroying the journal’s credibility and Holbrook’s career.

Target 2 – The university administrator: Dr Robert Ashford, who buried her complaint. Amara infiltrates the university’s systems and discovers Ashford has been awarding contracts and consultancies to his old school friends. She strategically leaks this information to investigative reporters, timing it with his nomination for a prestigious academic award.

Target 3 – The rival researcher: Dr. Sofia Reyes, who testified against Amara’s claims to protect her own collaboration with Blackwood. Amara sabotages Reyes’s field research by contaminating soil samples, causing months of invalid data and the collapse of a major grant-funded project.

The main target:  Amara plans the ultimate academic destruction for Blackwood himself. She infiltrates his new lab in disguise and with an assumed identity; she is a lab technician. She documents his continued plagiarism and research misconduct but is impatient. So she plants evidence suggesting he’s been falsifying data for years. She times the revelation to coincide with his keynote address at an International Climate Research Conference.

The investigation: Detective Lisa Park, a former science major turned cop, begins connecting the seemingly unrelated academic scandals. She notices the mathematical precision of the timing and the deep knowledge of academic systems required for each attack.

Complications: Amara begins mentoring a young graduate student who reminds her of her former idealistic self, creating moral conflict. Blackwood starts to suspect his new technician, forcing Amara to accelerate her timeline. Her actions begin harming innocent people – Reyes’  graduate student loses funding, her mentee loses their job.

Climax and resolution:

Option 1 – The cat and mouse climax: Park pieces together the pattern just as Amara’s final revenge against Blackwood unfolds at the conference. There’s a tense confrontation where Park arrives as Amara is about to release the most damaging evidence. Park has to choose between arresting Amara or letting her expose Blackwood’s ongoing crimes. This creates a moral dilemma – stopping a vigilante or stopping a serial plagiarist who’s still actively harming young researchers.

Option 2 – The confession: Amara, realising how far she’s fallen from her original principles (especially after seeing two young graduate students’ careers destroyed in the crossfire), turns herself in to Park. The detective becomes less adversary and more confessor, with Amara seeking redemption by accepting consequences for her actions.

Option 3 – The Pyrrhic victory: Park catches Amara and the investigation also fully exposes the systemic failures that created the situation. Amara goes to prison, but the evidence she gathered leads to major reforms in academic oversight and accountability. Blackwood and the others face their own legal consequences, but the cost, Amara’s destroyed life and career, makes it a hollow victory. The resolution is bittersweet – justice is served, but at enormous cost to everyone involved. The ending reinforces the notion that broken systems create victims who sometimes become perpetrators and that, even when wrongdoing is exposed, the damage can’t always be undone.

Which ending would you choose? And maybe I will write this, or one of the many others I have stashed away, one day.

This post is a little deviation from the usual patter and with huge apologies to anyone whose real name I’ve inadvertently appropriated.