The Northbury Papers [Mass Market Paperback]

Joanne Dobson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 1999

Teaching American women's literature at New England's prestigious Enfield College has shown Karen Pelletier just how cutthroat the world of academe can be. But nothing in her tenure has prepared her for the perils to come, as this bastion of higher learning throws open its doors to a cleverly calculating killer.

A battered copy of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre leads Professor Karen Pelletier to the long-forgotten novels of an obscure writer named Serena Northbury. When she decides to pen the author's biography, she sets off a raging controversy. Everyone, from her esteemed colleagues to her tyrannical department head, regards Northbury's nineteenth-century writings as trash. But when the intrepid researcher stumbles upon a treasure trove of Northbury's papers--including what looks very much like an unpublished novel--Karen knows she cannot quit, for what could be more thrilling?

Unfortunately, someone takes exception to Karen's penchant for digging up the past. Before long, she is the unlikely suspect in a homicide--and the target of an erudite killer who is poised to kill again.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Asked why she is fascinated by the "popular" (read "trashy") novels of 19th-century writer Serena Northbury, Professor Karen Pelletier says, "She's the only novelist I know from that era who writes about the kind of courage it takes to get through life day by day. No white whales. No uncharted forests. No scarlet letters. No great heroics at all. Just food and drink and perseverance. And ordinary kindness. And ordinary love." Then, to herself, she thinks, "A totally banal literary exegesis. If anyone in the English Department at Enfield heard it, I'd be drummed out of the profession." Serena Northbury doesn't exist: as Joanne Dobson tells us in an afterword, she's based on a novelist named Emma Southworth and also on Jo March, Louisa May Alcott's alter ego in Little Women. Karen Pelletier isn't real, either, but this second book about her (after Quieter Than Sleep) continues to make her one of the most interesting characters in recent crime fiction. Carpers might say that certain plot twists point to trouble down the road: both books are about missing old manuscripts; both have female scholarship students being sexually harassed by rich and/or powerful men; both find people Karen knows being murdered. As the increasingly attractive local cop, Lieutenant Piotrowski, says, "It's not that I don't appreciate your help. We coulda never unraveled this without you. But why does it always have to come to gunplay? Huh, Doctor? Can you tell me that? A nice quiet teacher like yourself: Why do you always end up facing a gun?" Well, lieutenant, it worked for Jessica Fletcher... --Dick Adler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Contradicting the joke that academic infighting is so fierce because the stakes are so small, a $10 million bequest may figure in murder at prestigious northeastern Enfield College. English professor Karen Pelletier (introduced in Quieter Than Sleep, 1997) decides to study the work of Serena Northbury, a 19th-century novelist considered trashy in her time. Pelletier, who advocates adding unheralded women and minority authors to the traditional literature curriculum, befriends the elderly and ailing Dr. Edith Hart, Northbury's great-granddaughter. Hart gives Pelletier access to her musty collection of Northbury writings and mementos. When Hart dies suddenly, police suspect foul play despite her old age and diabetes. Even Pelletier might have a motive, because Hart changed her will, leaving $10,000,000 to Enfield if Karen directs a research center devoted to Northbury. The windfall infuriates college trustee Thibault Brewster, a Hart relative who wanted more for himself. Brewster's son, known as Tibby II, disrupts one of Pelletier's classes and harasses a black female student. To such academic intrigues are added murder, missing manuscripts, the riddle of a baby picture from long ago and the news that Pelletier's former boyfriend is getting married. By the time this entertaining tale has revealed the full complement of small-mindedness on the Endicott campus, the unacademic local homicide detective, Piotrowski, is looking very appealing.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 335 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books (August 3, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553576615
• ISBN-13: 978-0553576610
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #827,799 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Wearing my creative hat (as distinct from my scholar's mortarboard),I am the author of the Professor Karen Pelletier academic mystery novels. In both my fiction and my scholarly work on 19th-century American women writers, I am fascinated with the past. Maybe that's because I sometimes feel as if I have lived in three different centuries. Born in New York City in the middle of the 20th-century, I spent all my summers at my grandmother's remote, 19th-century non-electrified home in northern New Brunswick, Canada, carrying wood for the stove, pumping water for the laundry, each morning disposing of the unmentionable contents of something I thought was spelled "p-o-e," but was really spelled "p-o-t" (as in chamber ...)and pronounced in the French manner for reasons of discretion. Now, in the 21st century, I am writing novels whose mysteries are often based in the past. DEATH WITHOUT TENURE is the most recent, published by Poisoned Pen Press in January 2010.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A modern mystery classic, August 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Northbury Papers (Mass Market Paperback)

I've always been a fan of mysteries. I grew up reading Nacy Drew and playing Clue, but I have never been completely satisfied when it came to reading many of the modern mystery writers. John Grisham and Mary Higgins Clark became redundant with over used storylines and Anne George builds a great story and then seems to get tired and just ends it, without giving the reader all of the information. Dobson's story kept me on the edge of my seat and I couldn't put The Northbury Papers down. Having a degree in English, I recognized the faculty dissension between the OWM's and people who read the phone book for culture studies. I didn't want the book to end and I can't wait to immerse myself in Enfield College again to read her other stories. Hopefully they will be as fresh as this one.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable read, August 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Northbury Papers (Mass Market Paperback)

Read it through in one sitting--very diverting with interesting characters and you even feel as if you're learning about American literature and academia along the way. My only quarrel is some of the dialog--especially the male characters is a little flat or even occasionally unrealistic. Overall though very good and I plan to buy her next one in hardcover.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shamega, Tibby and Sally Chenille, September 25, 2006

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Northbury Papers (Mass Market Paperback)

Karen Pelletier is the kind of English professor I wish I had had in college. Maybe if so I'd still be in the academy. But alas no, she is only the brainchild of Professor Joanne Dobson. A delightful thinker and speaker, Karen has had a troubled life and comes from the poor side of the tracks which nobody in the Ivy League will ever let her live down. No matter how acclaimed her scholarship, she doesn't have the money to live the lifestyle of her peers. And she is the mother of a daughter who, not to be blunt about this, is ashamed of her. It's sort of like Stella Dallas, but even more dramatic. Over the arc of the five Pelletier books, mother and daughter grow closer together, but it is a painful sort of relationship, reminding me of the one between Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann in AUTUMN SONATA.

Ironic then that Karen here is working on the papers of the (fictional) 19th century American Renaissance novelist Serena Northbury, who knew a few things about children and parents herself. Karen attracts the patronage of wealthy feminist Edith Hart, a lovely woman with a giant mansion that houses the archive of her great-great-grandmother, Serena Northbury herself. What do you know, but Karen lucks out and discovers the manuscript of CHILD OF THE NORTHSTAR, an unpublished novel by the one and only Serena Northbury, who was sort of like a Harriet Beecher Stowe except with Anne Sexton-like personal traumas. Next up, Dr. Edith Hart lies dead, the novel has disappeared, and Karen is under suspicion as the secretive millionairess has changed her will and left Karen $12 million, but looking on the bright side, this means that the police, in the person of studly Brian Dennehy lookalike Sgt Charlie Piotrowski, will be coming to call and we all know what happens when Pat meets Mike as it were!

They say opposites attract, and over the course of the books Karen falls hard for Charlie, even despite herself. This book is twice as long as it deserves to be, and has enough characters to fill out a trilogy by Selma Lagerlof, all with bewilderingly cute names like Shamega, Tibby and Sally Chenille, and it's ludicrous what happens in it, and yet I can see why Joanne Dobson has so many fans. We've been waiting years for a sixth book, one that would follow the MALTESE MANUSCRIPT of 2003. No wonder it takes so long for her to complete one of her bestsellers, they must each weigh in at 120,000 words or more of academic nonsense.