Helpful Score: 1
First in series. From the back cover: A beautiful young student needed help and turned to Kate Fansler, her young, witty professor of literature. Without hesitation, Kate recommended her dear friend and former lover, top notch psychoanalyst Emmanuel Bauer. Who could have imagined the student would end up on Dr. Bauer's couch with a knife in her lovely body? Kate was sure Emmanuel was innocent, but without an alibi, the doctor was a chief suspect...and so was his old friend Kate!
Helpful Score: 1
The Kate Fansler mysteries are very unusual--cerebral and academic and also funny. This is a good example. They are well worth reading if you are a mystery fan looking for a different experience.
Helpful Score: 1
If you enjoy intelligent, literate, witty mysteries with an academic twist then you will enjoy this series. There's little action but lots of talk. Kate Fansler is, at this stage in the series, a single professor of English Literature at a prestigious university in NYC with a penchant for becoming involved in murder investigations. She has an interesting Assistant District Attorney friend, Reed, who provides her with access to case material and the status of the investigation. The series reminds me somewhat of what Lord Peter Whimsey and Harriet Vane might have become if they had lived in a later era. This novel was written in 1964, so some of it is a bit dated, but the characters remain compelling and the mystery, if not of the thrills and chills variety, provides the usual unexpected twist. It is, in many way, a cozy, and is a rather gentle, tame story, as murders go, but the wit and intelligence with which this story is imbued make it all worthwhile.
From the jacket: A beautiful young studen needed help and turned to Kate Fansler, professor of Literature. Without hesitation Kate recommended her dear friend and former lover, top-notch psychoanalyst Emanuel Bauer. Who could have imagined the strudent would end up on Dr. Bauer's couch with a knife in her lovely body? Kate was sure Emanuel was innocent, but without an alibi, the doctor was a chief suspect .. and so was his old friend Kate! You'll be entertained right up to the time you find out who made the Freudian slip."
All of the mysteries by Amanda Cross that I have read have been interesting, cerebral, and clever. This book has good character development, intricate detail, and a surprise ending.
Murder mystery, university whodunnit.
I wanted to go back to the beginning and start the series over again. Still quite impressed by how well she wrote her first mystery! Loved the country setting, but found annoying the way the academics couldn't stop themselves from dithering and meandering, even when being interrogated by tthe police. But perhaps that was the point? Kaste and Reed - a couple to be reckoned with, and I enjoy their relationship as it progresses through the successive novels. A good read!
