An Imperfect Spy [Paperback]

Amanda Cross (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1995

"FASCINATING . . . The dialogue is, as always, elegant and polished."
--Los Angeles Times
While guest-teaching a semester at Schuyler Law School, Kate Fansler gets to know an extraordinary secretary named Harriet, who patterns her life after John le Carré's character George Smiley. Harriet reveals that Schuyler has some serious skeletons swinging in its perfectly appointed closets, including the fate of Schuyler's only tenured female professor and a faculty wife who has killed her husband. As if Kate doesn't have enough to tackle, she is also up against the men who comprise the faculty of Schuyler itself--a thoroughly unapologetic bastion of white male power, mediocrity, and misogyny. Although she has only a few months on campus, Kate refuses to let Schuyler's rigid ideals and insistence on secrecy suppress her indefatigable curiosity--or her obsession with the truth. . . .
"Cross manages to keep this book as lighthearted and witty as any of the Kate Fansler mysteries, while depicting an institution as lethal as any cold war."
--Marilyn French
"A funny, snappish polemic on political correctitude that takes great relish in Kate's sardonic views."
--The New York Times Book Review


From the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her latest jab at academia's underside, New York City literature professor Kate Fansler, last seen in The Players Come Again, team teaches a course in "Women in Law and Literature" at Schuyler Law School while her husband, law professor Reed Amhearst, establishes a student-staffed legal clinic. Among Schuyler's predominantly mediocre and sexist faculty is a lively and mysterious 60-ish secretary named Harriet who models herself on John le Carre's fictional spy, George Smiley. Harriet, like Kate's teaching partner Blair Whitson, voices concern that the recent death of a feminist professor at Schuyler might not have been an accident. Harriet is also interested in the imprisoned Betty Osborne, who murdered her husband for "no reason" (as one Schuyler professor says: "Of course he didn't beat her; he was a member of this faculty."). Just as Kate begins to look into these deaths, she and Blair face a conservative backlash from a surprising quarter, touching off skirmishes sure to shake Schuyler's complacent foundations. While Kate and Reed are as appealing as ever, the real draw of this thinking-reader's mystery is the anger-at the limitations of women's roles in society (imposed and assumed)-that fuels it and its thoroughly disclosed academic setting. Besides posing and solving a neat puzzle, Cross provides a gold mine of stinging quotes for feminist college professors to post on their doors. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The newest Kate Fansler mystery (A Trap for Fools, Ballntine, 1990) heads each chapter with a quote from the works of Le Carre. These and frequent allusions to Hardy, Dickens, and Wilde indicate indebtedness to other authors and perhaps some critical self-awareness. Kate and husband Reed have each agreed to teach a course at New York's third-rate, racist, and chauvinistic Schuyler Law School, where they investigate the accidental death of the school's only woman professor and try to assist an imprisoned faculty wife who murdered her abusive husband. Highly sophisticated tone, carefully constructed prose, and nicely contrived plot make this a winner.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (March 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345464931
• ISBN-13: 978-0345464934
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,279,533 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Crossing the Line, November 11, 2004

By 

Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: An Imperfect Spy (Hardcover)

Kate Fansler had passed the statistical point of midlife. Nostalgia may be a disabling pressure that signifies retreat. Kate addresses the parents at her old school, the Theban. At the event she is challenged by a secretary from Schuyler Law School that she has never really done anything for the dispossessed, marginal individual.

Reed is to start a clinic at Schuyler Law School. The woman from the secretarial room at Schyler appears in the apartment building of Kate and Reed. She claims her presence proves her point that middle-aged women are invisible. The woman claims that reading John LeCarre has convinced her to become a spy.

The woman has disappeared, shedding her identity. Prior to that she was a professor. The woman calls herself Harriet. Harriet has pursued the couple for reason of Kate's crime-solving reputation. She wants them to investigate the death of a woman professor at Schuyler Law School.

Kate meets the faculty member who is to co-teach her literature and law seminar. Kate is seeking a pleasant change from MIDDLEMARCH. Trying to understand the men she meets at Schuyler, Harriet tells Kate that she has never met a group of bonded males swollen with mediocrity and power. Talking to her male colleague she comes to understand that he has crossed the line, he knows why a women's movement exists. Contemplating the death of the female faculty member causes Kate to go into her investigative mode. Kate goes to see the brother of the dead woman, Nellie Rosenbach.

In the end the mystery surrounding the Harriet character is disclosed. This book includes the battered woman syndrome and a host of feminist issues. This may be Carolyn Heilbrun's best Amanda Cross offering.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A little bit of mystery; a lot of whining., January 24, 1999

By 

Judy Ayoub, [e-mail] (Tucson, Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Imperfect Spy (Kate Fansler Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

What happened to the person who wrote "The James Joyce Murder?"

I can forgive Ms. Fansler for the more obscure literary references, which tend to bore the non- literature scholars, but 212 pages of whining about the plight of women! Only the choir would listen to that sermon.

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book, February 22, 2012

By 

March1044 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: An Imperfect Spy (Kate Fansler) (Kindle Edition)

I'm sorry that some readers so disliked this book, and published really savage reviews. I loved it, and one of the reasons, to be honest, is that I also love John Le Carre, and was very moved by the quotations as well as the whole spy theme. I have also seen, and experienced, sexism in institutions. Perhaps some of the readers are just too young.

Which really brings up the issue of what is fair criticism. Sometimes I read books but realize that the insights and underpinnings of the story are very far from my understanding of reality. But I would never publish a review of a book I can't like for those reasons. I don't think it's fair, and I wouldn't want to discourage people from reading who could enjoy that kind of world view.

If you are widely read, if you love Hardy and the story of Demeter, I think you'll love this book.