What's the deal? Your very own weekly Publisher's Lunch deal snark

Publisher's Lunch says: Stegner Fellow and Stanford/UCSF creative writing professor Alice LaPlante's TURN OF MIND, pitched as having a Patricia Highsmith-esque mystery at its heart, in which the narrator, a brilliant surgeon with Alzheimer's-related dementia, is suspected of killing a neighbor who was her best friend and most worthy adversary, to Morgan Entrekin and Elisabeth Schmitz at Grove/Atlantic, for publication in Winter 2011, by Victoria Skurnick at the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world). Foreign rights to Goldmann in Germany and Orlando in Holland, in pre-empts.

Indichik says: I know virtually nothing about Alice LaPlante and I'm so totally sure she's a wonderful writer and an even better creative writing professor blah blah blah, but ANOTHER STEGNER FELLOW? This has to be the fourth or fifth one this year I've read about having sold a first novel. I daresay it's getting to the point where Tobias Wolff and a handful of his Stanford cronies are dictating the entire future of literary fiction in this country. Yes, This Boy's Life was a good read (and no one loves picturing young Leo DiCaprio's face more than me), but seriously.

There are writing programs all over the country with different faculty who embrace different styles and methods, some of whom charge their students an arm and a leg to attend. Maybe we could throw a few scraps their way? Huh? At the very least, you'd be getting gratitude.

As for LaPlante's book itself, it sounds like The Thirteenth Tale meets The Lovely Bones. Yawn.