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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful writing but a poor mystery,
By
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This review is from: Death in a Tenured Position (Kate Fansler Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)
In "Death in a Tenured Position," Amanda Cross (Carolyn G. Heilbrun) presents a literate mystery. Someone has left Harvard a million dollars to fund a chair in the English department for a female professor. At 1978 Harvard, the idea of women professors is still something to be viewed with, if not utter revulsion, at least significant apprehension. It is a time when "women's studies" is considered a fadish and unnecessary program. Harvard hires Janet Mandelbaum, who also disdains such things as "women's studies" and who aspires only to succeed based on merit. At the misogynistic Harvard, though, to succeed based on merit, one first must be a man. Janet thus finds herself ostracized. Soon, she finds herself drugged and left in the women's room in a compromising position.Kate Fansler, a professor from New York, is asked to help out Janet, and Kate agrees, securing a position as a Fellow and beginning to consider the attempt to discredit Janet. Before long, though, Janet is found dead, and the police arrest someone Kate believes is innocent. Kate then turns to an unethical lawyer to help her friend while she investigates the death. As a real-world mystery, "Death in a Tenured Position" is rather a disaster. The lawyer hired to defend the police's main suspect seems not to care at all about his client and goes to great lengths to please Kate while harming the client. What is more important, though, is that one of the characters had to have known the solution to the mystery long before the denouement and should have explained it. In short, the mystery doesn't make sense, and it doesn't work in any real sense. The mystery, however, does involve some wonderful use of English poetry and prose, complete with allusions that make it all seem obvious, albeit only after the fact. But there is more to the novel than the mystery, and it is there that Cross succeeds admirably. In a field that is, nearly twenty years later, marked by increasing percentages of bad writing, "Death in a Tenured Position" is a remarkably well-written novel. Cross writes almost melodically, and her characters take on personalities merely by their word choice. To read a character correcting himself for saying "rather extreme," for example, is a pleasure. More to the point, though, the indictment of Harvard, which seems to be one of those all-too-frequent oxymora, the institute of higher learning mired in a pre-Elizabethan view of women, is unmitigated, unqualified, and unrepentant.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This one's okay, but far from her best,
By
This review is from: Death in a Tenured Position (Kate Fansler Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)
Generally speaking, there are two sorts of mystery novels. One gives most of its attention to the complexities of the crime and the ingenuity of its solution. The other gives much more space to development of the characters and commentary on the setting. (Ideally -- in my opinion -- the perfect mystery, like those of Sue Grafton, gives nearly equal weight to both sides of the story.) "Amanda Cross" is the nom de plume of Dr. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, who, like her protagonist, Kate Fansler, is a university professor of English in New York. This time Kate is called to Cambridge to help Janet Mandelbaum, an old acquaintance (but not really a friend) who has been named the first tenured female professor of English at Harvard. As difficult as it may be to remember, this was a really big deal in 1978, as Harvard was almost the last hold-out among prestigious American universities to develop a coed faculty as well as admitting women to the student body. Kate's somewhat manipulative friend, Sylvia Farnum, is in the story, as is her own niece, Leighton, and her old semi-lover, the laid back Moon Mandelbaum (who was also married to the late Janet twenty years before). The plot all seems a bit disconnected, not to say haphazard, and the solution is a bit of a cop-out -- or maybe not, I haven't decided. But the author certainly does a job on Harvard! This isn't Amanda Cross's best work, but it's certainly worth reading.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Readable, but not the best Kate Fansler,
By Moe811 (New York USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Death in a Tenured Position (Kate Fansler Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)
In this Amanda Cross mystery, Kate Fansler is approached by a complete stranger, to help a former aquaintance out of a situation that she shouldn't need rescue from. The aquaintance ends up dead of cyanide poisoning, her former husband, who is also a former lover of Kate's is accused, and Kate is asked to solve the mystery. The setting is Harvard University, where Kate's former friend is appointed as the first full professor in the English Department over the objections of the all-male faculty. Someone spikes her drink a department party and she ends up passed out in a bathtub with a local "sister" from a commune trying to revive her. Gossip flies about the campus. Another sister from the coffeehouse commune is sent to get Kate. Kate is more entranced by the dog than the sister, but still goes to Harvard to help. I had only one question during the whole story--WHY? Why does Kate go to a place she hates, to teach a class she doesn't want or need to, takes a leave from a job she loves, in a place where she is respected, to help a person from her past who she really doesn't give a damn about? As usual, the book is well written, the characters are not as well developed or sympathetic as I would have liked, but I suppose in a temporary position Kate wouldn't have gotten to know everyone all that well either. Not bad, but not her best work.
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