Customer Reviews

The Edith Wharton Murders: A Nick Hoffman Mystery (Stonewall Inn Mysteries)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book is so accomplished and outstanding, it's hard to know where to begin. Let's start by saying the New York Times Book Review was right in reviewing this book twice! Raphael is a fine literary writer (see his dark novel Winter Eyes, for example), but he's here mastered the art of academic satire and more than holds his own with David Lodge, Robert Barnard, Jane Smiley and Amanda Cross. It's a clever and compelling mystery, too, filled with extravagantly intriguing characters. There's a powerful depiction of a stable and loving relationship, and the book also offers wonderful social satire of the Edith Wharton boom of the 1990s. The prose is finely tuned, as you'd expect from this prize-winning author. Best of all, there is the witty,caring but put-upon voice of the narrator, Nick Hoffman, the embattled composition professor. In fact, there's so much here that less attentive readers may miss its wealth--so pour a glass of your favorite wine and read slowly! The Edith Wharton Murders is proof of what acclaimed mystery novelist Barbara D'Amato has said many times: we live in a great age of mystery writers.

Nick Hoffman & his companion, Stefan Borowski, are academics at the State University of Michigan in Michiganopolis (read Michigan State University, East Lansing). They have some cool and far too many specious colleagues, and everybody gets caught up in the dreadful politics of academia. This series is funny & educational & interesting & thoroughly addictive. It may seem odd to compare a mystery writer to novelist Laurie Colwin, but fans of hers should check out Lev Raphael. His writing is in many ways reminiscent of hers & that's about the highest compliment I can pay any writer! THE EDITH WHARTON MURDERS, like Raphael's other two mysteries, is written intelligently, humorously, with a very good ear &, in this one, an all-too-accurate view of that bizarre phenomenon, the Academic Conference.

What an utterly charming book! In THE EDITH WHARTON MURDERS, the second Nick Hoffman mystery, author Lev Raphael hits his stride--and it is something to behold. Witty, elegant and fun, this gay cosy (sub sub-genre?) details the murder and mayhem at an Edith Wharton conference hosted by SUM Lit professor, Nick Hoffman.

Elements that irked me in the self-conscious LET'S GET CRIMINAL, the first of this original series, are noticeably missing here. For example, main characters Nick and (particularly) Stefan are fleshed out and much more likeable (scatty, enthusiastic, emotional Nick is fast developing into a classic). Their relationship is explored, and I was relieved to see some fallout over the Perry Cross affair (no healthy person takes betrayal as meekly as Nick appeared to in LET'S GET CRIMINAL).

Raphael is refreshingly ruthless in targeting his murder victims from both old and new characters. He sets a lively pace and keeps his amusing cast dancing, while tantalyzing the reader with mouthwatering descriptions of good music, good food, good wine and clever conversation. And I think he makes a smart decision in keeping his mysteries non-gay specific. Nick and the reluctant Stefan are normal, attractive guys (who happen to be gay) caught up in the extraordinary occurrence of murder. It could happen to anyone--though probably not so entertainingly.

I can't wait to see what mischief Nick next gets himself--and the handsome and frequently disapproving Stefan--into.

"The Edith Wharton Murders" has it all---good writing, a bright and charming amateur sleuth, and a fresh and ironic take on those well-worn groves of academe. Wait---before you groan and mutter something about "another campus mystery with cutesy cartoon characters as faculty members," give this one a try. You''ll find plenty of highly UNstereotyped profs---you probably had classes with some of them, maybe even Nick Hoffman himself. New t-shirt motto: I LUV LEV!

Raphael really knows how to navigate this territory. Nick is smart, perceptive, and just insecure and naive enough to be a believeable, albeit unusual, academic/amateur sleuth. He lives well, is a curious observer, and he even likes his students. Probably that's why he's always in such hot water with colleagues and superiors. This wise and intelligent mystery is squarely in the tradition of Nick and Nora; and it pays homage as well to the wit and elegance--and psychological dimensions--of Edith Wharton's most mature work. That's why this satirical literary mystery works in satisfying ways on several different levels.

Professor Nick Hoffman is a very small fish swimming with the tenured and powerful sharks at the State University of Michigan, so his future in academia hangs in the balance when he is asked to pull together a conference on Edith Wharton.

It is a request that threatens to unhinge Hoffman's career, his sanity or both. Created to shore up the school's shaky multicultural reputation, the conference has to be thrown together in six months, and the success of the event depends upon the cooperation of two Wharton societies who despise each other. Think of them as the Jets and the Sharks, only with much shabbier clothes.

Troubles pile onto troubles for Hoffman, who also has to contend with a galaxy of attendees with agendas of their own: an obnoxious romance writer, who wrote a fluffy biography about Wharton that both societies despise, and her equally toxic editor; a university trustee who condemns Hoffman's homosexuality; and the star of the conference, Chloe DeVore, the literary light who brings along her feuding lover, and whose presence disturbs one of Hoffman's academic colleagues.

Then, one of the attendees gets bashed in the head with a marble tile. Unless Hoffman discovers who did it and why, the resulting firestorm of bad publicity could chase him away from SUM and even his lover.

A self-professed "recovering academic," Lev Raphael knows of life beyond the classroom. His books ring true with the details of that life, and he casts a caustic eye on university politics, academic posturing and pseudo-intellectual claptrap. In his view, the academic world is cloistered, intellectually incestuous and filled with political infighting that would rival the Borgias. Hell to work in, great to read about.

And as for Nick Hoffman, bless his scattered mind, his fragile heart and his love for Edith Wharton's work. He is an appealing man, sympathetic for the situation he found himself in, and attractive for his taste in music and food. The revenge of good living make up a good part of this series, and here we get descriptions dishes like sweet potato and foie gras ravioli, butterflied leg of lamb stuffed with spinach, mint, and orange zest, and Grand Marnier ice cream in white chocolate shells amid the strains of Liszt. If he's not as quick with the bon mots and bitchy remarks as in "Let's Get Criminal" -- although certain popular writers like David Balducchi and the current craze for memoirs come in for their share of abuse -- it may be because he is touched by murder more than the usual series character. This is a sign that Raphael is a writer who came late to the mystery genre; he avoids most of the pitfalls that tattoos a mystery writer, and it is this attention to the characters and their complex, sometimes contradictory emotions and desires, that sets his work above the rest.

The premise is funny: murders occur at an conference about Edith Wharton, an opportunity to puncture academic pretensions. But the humor is forced, the characters cardboard, the mystery uninvolving, the important clues unrevealed to the very end. Skip it.

Raphael's State University and its Edith Warton Conference are dedicated to the proposition that there is no academic too self-conscious or modest. Nick Hoffman, the reluctant hero of Raphael's series, has grown since his first appearance in Let's Get Criminal, and the dialogue is a treat to behold. This is a sure winner for fans of academic satires and traditional mysteries. Reminiscent of Robert Barnard, especially his Hovering of Vultures (a convention of Bronte ideologues). Prerequisite: a well-developed sense of humor.

I'm an Edith Wharton fan and collector and couldn't resist this book because of its title. I should have especially since money and time were involved--I bought instead of borrowed, harcover no less, and regret the time wasted on this silly, pretentious book. What Raphael writes about one of his characters, a writer, applies to this book "...Books with far-fetched plots, shallow but showy characters, and improbable coincidences."

This is my third Lev Raphael mystery (though I did not read them in order). I have liked them more and more with each one I have read, I think because I am growing to understand and also growing more and more fond of Raphael's protagonist, Nick Hoffman, intrepid detective but also modest Edith Wharton bibliographer and sympathetic lover of creature comforts (especially the fine wines and foods his guilty partner Stefan serves up to him).

Nick is drawn into the various murders that occur on his surprisingly violent upper midwestern campus in spite of himself but with uncomfortable enthusiasm that bemuses the detective actually in charge of the cases, the stolid Inspector Valley. My favorite moment in this novel is when Valley discovers Nick having trespassed onto the terrain of the investigation by breaking and entering the house of a suspect. Nick hears the noises that let him know someone else has entered the house ("No. I hear footsteps."); he swivels in his chair "terrified" but determined to confront the interloper directly no matter what the danger (Nick wants to have the courage of his convictions even if he cannot always manage it). But there "Detective Valley appeared in the doorway, shaking his head."

Raphael has a perfect sense of timing here and captures the comic deflation of the scene with the same unerring instinct he also brings to the novel's often witty and sophisticated dialogue.

The books are not perfect. Sometimes the plots become too wildly implausible, and I wouldn't be truthful if I said the quality of the dialogue was at a uniformly high standard. But for the most part Lev Raphael really does get it right, and he has created a very memorable and likeable series detective.