BLUE BLOOD (Ivy League Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Pamela Thomas-Graham (Author)

Book Description

Series: Ivy League Mysteries | Publication Date: May 5, 1999

Murder returns to the Ivy League in this second book in Pamela Thomas-Graham's critically acclaimed Ivy League Mystery series. Set at Yale, yet once again featuring Harvard Professor Nikki Chase as heroine and sleuth, Blue Blood is sure to please both the fans and reviewers ("...carefully crafted"; "...a fast and funny whodunit", "...a witty, sexy mystery") who discovered the delights of Ms. Thomas-Graham's previous novel, A Darker Shade of Crimson.

This time out, Nikki Chase gets a call for help from an old friend who has become a Dean at Yale University and may be in line for the presidency. When she responds to his plea, she finds more than she bargained for, as she encounters a brutal murder and explosive racial conflict lurking behind that esteemed institution's ivy-covered stone walls.

When the body of blond, blue-eyed Amanda Fox, a controversial Yale Law School Professor, is discovered on a deserted street in black inner-city New Haven with multiple stab wounds -- and a missing left hand -- thirty-year-old Harvard Economics Professor Nikki Chase rushes to the campus to comfort the dead woman's husband, her old friend and mentor Gary Fox. But when he becomes a suspect in the murder, Nikki finds herself turning detective again.

When the police arrest and charge Marcellus Tyler, a black Yale sophomore and football star, who was the last person to have seen Amanda alive, Nikki resists the temptation to relax her investigation of the murder. She recognizes the possibilities of Tyler's guilt -- he does admit to an attraction to the murdered professor -- but she also suspects a rush to judgment on the part of the New Haven police. Further complicating the scenario is the reaction Tyler's arrest draws from the city's black community, as the Reverend Leroy Saunders, a local black minister, seizes the opportunity to gain the spotlight. Soon all of New Haven becomes polarized along racial lines.

Moving among professors, student leaders, blue-blooded alumni and black activists, Nikki is drawn into a web of adultery, greed, and racial strife in the Gothic dormitories of Yale and the mean streets of New Haven. It takes the full complement of her trademark tenacity -- along with some help from her friends back at Harvard -- to uncover the deadly secrets hidden behind Yale's ivied façade.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Veronica "Nikki" Chase (A Darker Shade of Crimson, 1998), assistant professor in Harvard's Economics department and its only African-American, rushes to New Haven to comfort her old friend, Gary Fox, a dean at Yale, when his wife, Amanda, is murdered. When Gary falls under suspicion, Nikki vows to clear him. Amanda was a gorgeous, brainy blonde, ambitious, politically conservative, irresistible to men. She also had an unpublicized affection for the underdog and an active extramarital sex life; either may have led to her death. Although the police clear Gary, Nikki is incensed that they've arrested an obviously innocent black student for the killing. When Gary's best friend dies, leaving an oddly convenient confession to Amanda's murder and impugning Gary's reputation, Police Sgt. Timothy Heaney accepts Nikki as a cohort. Her immaculate academic credentials and her black skin allow her to maneurver smoothly among the Yale establishment of genteel blue bloods as easily as among the social activists of the Resurrection Tabernacle Deliverance Church. In a harrowing climax, her sharp eye identifies the murderer, who arrogantly confesses before attempting to throw her out of a carillon tower. Nikki comes off as a bit too lucky as a detectiveAshe always seems perfectly placed to overhear incriminating conversations. Nonetheless, Thomas-Graham shows that racial prejudice is a two-way street, develops characters more fully rounded than in her first novel and crisply evokes a hulking Yale campus set like a medieval fortress within a decaying, racially divided city.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-Harvard economics professor Nikki Chase is awakened by a four a.m. phone call from her friend Gary Fox, a dean at Yale University, with the news that his controversial, conservative wife Amanda has been found murdered on the streets of New Haven. Nikki rushes to support Gary only to discover that he is one of the suspects. Nikki also uncovers a maze of relationships that Amanda had with a minister, a student, a multimillionaire benefactor, and a professor-any of whom could have been her killer. Life at an Ivy League university, with its behind-the-scenes politics, internal squabbles, and academic infighting, forms the backdrop for this mystery. Nikki is a smart black woman who forges friendships with policemen, ministers, professors, and students. This is the second in a series that has appeal for mystery lovers, Ivy League wanna-bes, or those who like a good story with a hint of romance.
Pam Spencer, Young Adult Literature Specialist, Virginia Beach, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (May 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068484527X
• ISBN-13: 978-0684845272
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,976,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Puzzled By Glowing Reviews, December 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: BLUE BLOOD (Ivy League Mysteries) (Hardcover)

I must say Blue Blood was a big disappointment... The pacing is good, and the Yale setting interesting, but Thomas's characters are one cardboard trope after another. She relies much too much on archetypes: the nosy amateur detective, the "things are not what they seem" academic, the repressed blue bloods, the obnoxious rich people, the chic and lovably eccentric grad student, the dysfunctional gay man, the angry activist, and the oversexed blonde. I cared little about any of the characters, felt almost no dramatic build-up, no tension, no suspense. Why have others lavished such praise on this barely adequate book?

It's hard to take seriously a mystery that is prefaced by three pages of "acknowledgements" and ends with an extensive list of the author's non-literary achievements. Is Thomas's role as a trailblazer supposed to insulate her from criticism of her cliched characters and suspenseless plotting? I was a little put off by being reminded of how Thomas was the first this and the first that, and how she's on the board of this and on the committee for that. Who cares? She's not writing a memoir, she's writing a mystery novel.

I hope she does better with her in-the-works Princeton mystery (which is based on the defection of Cornel West from Princeton to Harvard). As a minority alum of that school, I look forward to reading her spin on it--but I must say that my expectations are not high.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant view of ivy league, March 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: BLUE BLOOD (Ivy League Mysteries) (Hardcover)

After reading Thomas-grahm's first mystery at Harvard (Darker Shade of Crimson), I was eager to see if she could capture the conflicts of race and gender at Yale. She's done it brilliantly in "Blue Blood". The Harvard book was more of a challenge to read because it did not move as quickly as Blue Blood's story line. What I liked most about this book was that it really told you how black women have a foot in two worlds when they are trying to succeed in the mostly white and male world of the Ivy League. I know that there are a lot of black folks (including myself) who originally were suspicious of Thomas-Grahm's writing because we see her in TV interviews, on covers of business magazines and read her bio. I hate to admit it, but after reading about her 3 Harvard degrees, her Phi beta kappa, her Harvard Law Review, her lawyer/writer husband (he wrote about the black upper class--"Our Own Kind of People") her McKensey consulting firm partner stuff, her opera board and her first black running a division of NBC yadda yadda, I wanted to hate her because I was so jealous. Then I read her book and I said "Wow!" I realized that not only does she write really well, but it occurred to me that we're always complaining that talented blacks are never given their due. Well, I can say that here is a black renaissance woman that deserves what she's got. We should be proud of her rather than cutting her down. "Blue Blood" was a great book and it would be an even better movie. Thomas-grahm really understands how to write about the integrated world that so many of us middle class blacks have to deal with. She also seems to know a lot about the upperclass WASP world. Her books introduced me to a whole new world of campus intrigue. Great stuff.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nancy Drew of the 90's, April 4, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Blue Blood (Ivy League Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

Although I read the book in a matter of hours, I was a little disappointed in the authors writing style and depth of delivery given her list of accomplishments ( contained extensively on the last page of the book) I would like to have seen more thought go into the development of her characters. Notwithstanding the story lines' focus on the death of a "typical white female", I was somewhat disappointed that the author did not see fit to put at least one positive black male role model in the book. After all, I am sure there is one in the New Haven area! Just reminded me of Nancy Drew novels that I read some 20 years ago. Not particulary appealing to mature audiences.