Customer Reviews

NO WORD FROM WINIFRED

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I really enjoyed this mystery. If I had to state a negative, it would be with Cross's obsession with dairy cows. She overdescribes them in The James Joyce Murders also. Other than that, it was a fast moving suspense filled story. The author really pulled together the wide spread elements of the mystery, from England to Houston to the Berkshires to New York and California, Kate Fansler doggedly pursues any and all clues to finding the missing Winifred Ashby. This mystery was very entertaining, and the ending was suprising. I recommend it highly.

Amanda Cross counsels us that `living is not just holding your breath until life settles down'. In the novel `No Word from Winifred', her character Winifred Ashby does not appear to be someone found sitting around holding her breath. In fact, for the moment, Winifred can't be found at all.

Kate Fansler, Cross' academic sleuth helps her niece search for the missing woman working with vague clues and more information on her deceased aunt than on Winifred herself. As in many Cross novels, the exercise expended to gather clues is usually cerebral and `grilling a suspect' happens in only the finest restaurants. In this book, a myriad of highbrow characters and a few sleazier types join Kate in the search for Winifred.

Amanda Cross (Carolyn Gold Heilbrun) often received unflattering reviews because of accusations that her books are more politics than mysteries. I enjoyed `No Word from Winifred' and many of her books because they are political. They are also good mysteries.

This eighth of fourteen mysteries with Kate Fansler has several echoes of earlier novels in the series, some of which may reward fans. The three chapters containing the journal of the missing character of the title and another chapter with letters from another character resemble the epistolary Prologue and Epilogue of Death in a Tenured Position. Leighton (Kate's niece) from that novel is back, as sassy and undirected as ever. One of the plot elements, an in-progress literary biography of a British novelist, is also rehashed from The Question of Max. Four of the minor characters are professors of English literature with positions in high-visibility universities. Cross/Heilbrun includes several stabs at MLA (Modern Language Association) conventions. Readers should expect the same excess of boozing in socially elevated environments as Kate and her intimates guzzle brandy, wine, beer, martinis, and whatever other alcoholic liquids they can swallow.