January 2, 1995
In her latest jab at academia's underside, New York City literature professor Kate Fansler, last seen in The Players Come Again, team teaches a course in ``Women in Law and Literature'' at Schuyler Law School while her husband, law professor Reed Amhearst, establishes a student-staffed legal clinic. Among Schuyler's predominantly mediocre and sexist faculty is a lively and mysterious 60-ish secretary named Harriet who models herself on John le Carre's fictional spy, George Smiley. Harriet, like Kate's teaching partner Blair Whitson, voices concern that the recent death of a feminist professor at Schuyler might not have been an accident. Harriet is also interested in the imprisoned Betty Osborne, who murdered her husband for ``no reason'' (as one Schuyler professor says: ``Of course he didn't beat her; he was a member of this faculty.''). Just as Kate begins to look into these deaths, she and Blair face a conservative backlash from a surprising quarter, touching off skirmishes sure to shake Schuyler's complacent foundations. While Kate and Reed are as appealing as ever, the real draw of this thinking-reader's mystery is the anger-at the limitations of women's roles in society (imposed and assumed)-that fuels it and its thoroughly disclosed academic setting. Besides posing and solving a neat puzzle, Cross provides a gold mine of stinging quotes for feminist college professors to post on their doors. Author tour.
September 1, 1994
Series sleuth-cum-feminist literary scholar Kate Fansler encounters the usual diversions-i.e., murder and male chauvinism-in this newest installment in the author's popular mystery series.
November 1, 1994
The newest Kate Fansler mystery (A Trap for Fools, Ballntine, 1990) heads each chapter with a quote from the works of Le Carre. These and frequent allusions to Hardy, Dickens, and Wilde indicate indebtedness to other authors and perhaps some critical self-awareness. Kate and husband Reed have each agreed to teach a course at New York's third-rate, racist, and chauvinistic Schuyler Law School, where they investigate the accidental death of the school's only woman professor and try to assist an imprisoned faculty wife who murdered her abusive husband. Highly sophisticated tone, carefully constructed prose, and nicely contrived plot make this a winner. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/94.]
December 15, 1994
Cross' popular academic sleuth Kate Fansler returns, this time as a guest professor at the down-at-the-heels Schuyler Law School, where she has been asked to teach a course on literature and the law. Ardent feminist Kate soon finds that not only is Schuyler a bastion of intolerant, supercilious white males, but worse, any attempt by women or minorities to be heard is quickly quashed by the old-boy network. When Kate learns of the suspicious death of a former female professor at the school, she enlists the aid of would-be spy and school secretary Harriet Furst to investigate whether the white-male power base is somehow responsible. Kate is always a delight with her ready humor, keen intelligence, and passionate stance on feminism, though it's hard to imagine a real-life married couple having the erudite, always-polite conversations that seem a matter of course for her and husband Reed. Unreality aside, readers love Kate, and they are equally smitten with Cross' inventive plots. A popular choice for all mystery collections. ((Reviewed December 15, 1994))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1994, American Library Association.)