Western cultural practices contribute to our understanding of the purpose of higher education and how we are to conduct ourselves in educational contexts. In this article, entitled "Seekers after truth?", I analyse recent works of popular fiction which draw on and contribute to the idea that postgraduate research is a process of locating and amassing clues leading to the revelation or discovery of a truth. These novels re-inscribe the metaphor of the postgraduate researcher as detective or "seeker after truth". This article considers the contradictory and productive meanings that arise from the trope of the researcher-detective. In addition, I argue that, although there are challenges in bringing the work of one field to bear on another, analyses of discourses which are not produced within higher educational contexts can nonetheless promote reflection on educational concepts. In this case, fiction enables us to consider ideas about what it is to "do" postgraduate research and to "be" a postgraduate researcher. (Contains 1 note.)