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Summary
Summary
From Amanda Cross, the master of the literary mystery novel, comes the latest installment in her legendary series about academic sleuth Kate Fansler. In this highly anticipated sequel to The Puzzled Heart, Fansler abets private investigator Estelle Woody Woodhaven in a bizarre murder-by-poisoning case.
Author Notes
Carolyn Gold Heilbrun was born in East Orange, New Jersey on January 13, 1926. She received a bachelor's degree in English from Wellesley College in 1947 and a master's degree in 1951 and a doctorate in 1959 from Columbia University. She spent almost her entire academic career at Columbia University, joining the faculty in 1960 as an instructor of English and comparative literature and retiring as the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities in 1992.
She wrote several books under her real name including Toward a Recognition of Androgyny: Aspects of Male and Female in Literature, Reinventing Womanhood, Writing a Woman's Life, and The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty. She wrote the Kate Fansler Mystery series under the pseudonym Amanda Cross. She committed suicide on October 9, 2003.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In her 13th Kate Fansler novel (after The Puzzled Heart), Cross lets her mask of pseudonymity slip, building her plot and characters out of the myriad impressions of vicious, small-minded academic infighting she has amassed as the real-life Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Columbia University humanities prof and past president of the Modern Language Association. Introducing a new investigator, heavy, mid-30ish, motorcycle riding PI Estelle "Woody" Woodhaven, Cross pulls Fansler onto the sidelines to serve as charming adviser in a murder case set at insular, fictitious Clifton College in New Jersey. When Charles Haycock, a reactionary Tennyson scholar, drops dead at a Christmas party, poisoned via an overdose of heart medicine placed in his private bottle of Greek retsina, Woody is hired by Clifton's English department to find the killer. Soon she turns to Fansler in despair at academicians' double-talk. In a gentle, courtly style that rubs off awkwardly on the much-younger Woody, college professor Fansler shares her rueful insights into the bias and petty tyrannical old-boying that has mired contemporary academia in irrelevance and mediocrity. As wry and charming as Fansler is, however, Woody's exasperation soon rubs off on the reader. Virtually all the characters Woody interviews end up spouting off about what a dull and noxious little bog Clifton College is. All agree that the dead man was so sexist and such a nut that the world is better off without him. Alas, the redoubtable Cross has produced a kind of mystery emeritus, a meandering reflection on a kind of cultural crime that cannot be satisfyingly solved. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Although Cross' latest excursion into murder in the rarefied atmosphere of academia is billed as a Kate Fansler mystery (Fansler appeared as Cross' English prof^-sleuth in 12 previous puzzles), Fansler makes only a few consulting cameos here. The bulk of the book belongs to narrator Estelle Woodhaven, a New York private eye who decides to tap into Fansler's knowledge about academics as she investigates the poisoning murder of a Victorian lit professor, a confirmed misogynist, at a small college in New Jersey. Woodhaven's question for Fansler is whether English departments are likely to harbor a murderer. Cross spends more time answering that question (even though her readers already know her feelings about cutthroat colleagues) than she does in piecing together a satisfying mystery. The result is more ethnography than mystery. Cross' fans, however, will probably welcome a new Fansler, however tenuous her connection to the actual detective work. --Connie Fletcher
Kirkus Review
The latest case for Kate Fansler (The Puzzled Heart, 1997, etc.) has a big fat surprise: Estelle Woody Woodhaven, a real live licensed p.i., is the narrator, with Fansler shunted to the role of mentor. Fat is more than a feminist issue to Woody; its her only issue, recurring like hiccups in every conversation. Naturally, shes intimidated at the thought of consulting svelte, erudite Kate, whom her friend Claire Wiseman assured her could help Woody understand the byzantine world of Clifton College, a small school with a big problem: the murder of its English departments chair. And Kate does help her understandsort ofwhy Charles Haycocks obsession with the Victorian poet Tennyson could cause him to persecute his more modern junior colleagues, why modernist Antonia Lansbury would fight back by staging a production of Virginia Woolfs Freshwater, why medievalist James Petrillo would try to reconcile bitter enemies, why writing instructor Kevin Oakwood would support Haycocks bid to be chair in spite of their mutual antipathy, and why anyone would want to stay in such a snakepit to begin with. Woody may be the shamus here, but Kates the real sleuth. Owing more to Freud than Holmes, she listens and listens and then just sees the light, using intuition in place of deduction to crack the case. Crosss plot may be clueless, but her characters arent. With insight and wit as wide as her waistline, Woody would be a worthy protagonist, if Kate could just scoot over and leave her some room.
Library Journal Review
Fans of the "Kate Fansler" mystery series will be glad to see that the literary sleuth is back, this time as a consultant to private eye Estelle "Woody" Woodhaven, who is investigating the murder of misogynistic Tennyson scholar Charles Hancock. Woody, a down-to-earth, overweight sleuth, is a likable foil to the elegant, erudite Kate. In her 13th installment of the series, Cross (the pseudonym for feminist literary scholar Carolyn Heilbrun) deftly skewers the academic establishment as Woody uncovers the political feuding and literary fanaticism that led to the murder of Professor Hancock. Devotees of the series may be disappointed at Kate's relatively minor role, but they will be amply compensated by the delightful Woody, who tools around New York City on her motorbike solving crimes yet is always poignantly aware of the way other people react to her portly physique. Highly recommended.DJane la Plante, Minot State Univ., ND (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
CHAPTER ONE "Some work of noble note, may yet be done." -- Tennyson, "Ulysses" When I had finished writing up my report, covering everything in the investigation as it then stood, I leaned back in my chair and gave myself up to facing facts. So far, so good, but only so far and no further. I knew the moment had come to call upon Kate Fansler. She had been recommended to me as the logical, perhaps the only person who could be of help at the current impasse. As a private investigator of some reputation and accomplishment, I never shy away from consulting anyone who can offer me a shove, however minimal, in the right direction, but Kate Fansler gave me pause. She was a detective herself, if strictly amateur, and a professor into the bargain. I don't mind asking experts for explanations in any abstruse field--I'm ready to admit what's beyond my powers--but I couldn't help fearing that the air that lady breathed was a little too rarefied for my earthly self. And then of course there was the fact that she was said to be slender. I, being fat, dislike thin women--I'm more open-minded about men--and in the end I admitted this to my client, the one who had suggested Fansler. I was guaranteed that though she was undoubtedly skinny--that term, being vaguely insulting, appeals to me--Fansler never worried about her weight or threatened to go on a diet. If there is one thing more revolting than another, it is thin women complaining about their fat and screaming about their need to lose weight. Not Fansler, I was assured. With her it's a matter of metabolism--genes, really. She eats what she wants and hates health food and any form of low-fat diet, my client told me. Well, blessings are unevenly distributed in this world, though Hindus think we all earned our fate by our actions in a previous life. I probably was starving, skeletal, and yearning for food every minute of the day and night. Hence my current figure. I'd gone to many doctors and diet specialists, all of whom tried to determine why I was fat, and how I might get thin. It was always assumed it was some problem with my psyche. One day I happened to meet up with a doctor who explained that there was such a thing as an inherited tendency to largeness. He held to this view even under my vigorous cross-examination. I began not only to accept the fact that I was fat, that my father had weighed three hundred pounds and my mother not far behind, but that, furthermore, once people got used to the idea of my size it might not matter that much anymore. It was genes with me, same as with Fansler. But of course it still matters. I collect plump people who are accomplished as well as heavy. It helps to knit up my raveled self-esteem. People seldom realize it, but fat is the only affliction that has never been protected by affirmative action, antibias laws, or any other category like sexual harassment, date rape, or domestic violence, though I seem to remember someone once wrote a book called Fat Is a Feminist Issue. The point is, it's okay to say and do anything to fat people short of murder, and to refuse them a job because you think their failure to lose weight is a character and mental defect. They don't even call it heft-disadvantaged or weightily challenged. There was Nero Wolfe. It's easier for men, of course, with this as with everything else. Dorothy Sayers was fat. When she lived in Witham, they used to say that her husband drank and she ate. When she wasn't translating Dante, that is. When she'd had enough of Peter Wimsey. I'm afraid I've gotten in the habit of mentioning my size to bring it out into the open when I meet someone so that we can go on to other things. I'd have to be careful not to overdo that with Kate Fansler. Enough, I told myself firmly. Without thinking about it too much, I picked up the phone and called her, introducing myself as recommended to her by Claire Wiseman, who used to teach at Clifton. "Ah," Fansler said, "what Charles Dickens called a mutual friend." She made an appointment to see me at her home the next afternoon. My name is Estelle Aiden Woodhaven, licensed as a private investigator; everyone calls me Woody. Estelle was my grandmother's name; Aiden is what they would have named me if I'd been a boy, which they had rather hoped I would be. It's easy to figure out what Woody is short for; I think it definitely sounds investigative, which Estelle certainly does not. One of the fancy academic types I've been dealing with said it sounded androgynous, so people wouldn't know I was a woman until they were face-to-face with me. Right, I thought; and they wouldn't know I was fat, either. Of course, I didn't say all this to Kate Fansler when I met her the next afternoon; I just drew attention to my size, because I find it's necessary to assure clients and those I consult that I may be fat, but I can get around. In fact, I told her, I coach a college hockey team--field hockey, not ice; I'm also trained in self-defense. Also, I pointed out, there's an advantage in looking like a lazy linebacker if you're not really sluggish. "Sorry to have put you through all that," I said to Kate Fansler. "I guess the thought of talking to you made me nervous." Kate opened her mouth and closed it. She put on glasses to read the card I had handed her, which she had been too polite to look at while I was talking. Now she gazed at me over her glasses, which gave her the look of a psychoanalyst I'd once gone to, another thin dame, who had knitted throughout our sessions when she wasn't peering at me over her spectacles. She hadn't helped me at all, and neither had any of the other shrinks I'd been advised to consult. "I didn't know anyone played field hockey anymore," Kate said. "We used to play it in school; I was a wing--much smacking of ankles with sticks." "Not if it's played properly," I said with dignity. "I shall come by one day and watch the team you coach," Kate said. "Meanwhile . . ." "What am I here for? My usual tasks involve divorce, theft, blackmail, suspicions of commercial cheating. Now I've been hired for a job that's a bit beyond my scope; I was hoping to hire you as a consultant, a subcontractor, whatever. Is there a chance you might agree?" "There's a chance I might listen. May I venture a guess that your case has to do with an academic or literary matter?" "They said you were a good detective." Kate smiled. "It hardly took detective powers to guess that. Tell me about it, and we'll see if I think I can help. Won't you sit down?" she said, waving toward a chair. I had been standing while I made my speeches and handed her my card. Now I sat. "Can't I get you a cold drink?" Kate said. It was late September but really hot--Indian summer or something. Even though riding a motorbike is cooler than walking, you're still moving through the humidity and heat and likely to be sweating upon arrival. Not that a taxi would have been much better; they aren't really air-conditioned whatever they claim. The subway cars are cool enough, but the stations are Turkish baths. "A glass of cold water would be welcome," I said. I seemed to take a lot of time deciding what to say to her. She left the room to fetch my drink, and I took the opportunity to look around. I'm not much interested in furniture as a rule; I only notice it when it concerns some problem I'm trying to figure out. I'm good at noticing; any half-decent detective has to be good at noticing, but I don't sit around describing everything to myself the way they seem to do in books. This room was appealing, however, cool of course--there was an air conditioner--but also comfortable, as though they'd bought some pretty good furniture a while back and just let it grow old along with them. A bit shabby, I guess it was, but you didn't get the feeling they were trying to impress anyone with their good taste. This was just a room to sit in. Excerpted from Honest Doubt by Amanda Cross All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.