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A Trap for Fools: A Kate Fansler Mystery

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Dr. Canfield Adams egotistical chair of the Islamic studies department is found dead on the pavement below his office window. The police see no reason to suspect foul play, but anyone who has met the man knows that he is the last person in the world to commit suicide. There are many suspects, but the police have locked in on the most unlikely, Kate's friend Humphrey Egereton. Adams resented the fact that Egereton's black students would use an office in his building for meetings. Kate is pressured into investigating by her friend in the administration, Edna, who tells Kate that she is the only one who can solve the matter discreetly.

I found myself unable to put this book down. It was by far the quickest read of all Cross' novels. The story has many twists and turns and a surprise ending that I didn't expect at all.

A TRAP FOR FOOLS is a fairly good mystery story about the murder of an unpopular college professor. University authorities ask faculty member Kate Fansler to conduct her own investigation of the death in addition to the police inquiry.

It helps if the reader is familiar with the quirky and sometimes mean atmosphere found at many colleges. It also helps if the reader is interested in literature as well as feminine and minority rights issues.

A man's body is found on the Sunday after Thanksgiving on the campus. Apparently there was an unbroken fall of seven stories from the man's Levy Hall office. It is Professor Canfield Adams. The president, Matthew Noble, mentally notes forty or so people with homicidal motives. Most people have alibis. Professor Adams recently served on a committee with Kate Fansler. The solution to the murder escapes everyone as the fall semester gives way to the spring. Kate is told that she is the university's only hope of solving the crime.

Canfield Adams never seemed to finish a sentence. He had been a dandy. Being a detective at her own university makes Kate nervous. She is afraid that she will fail. Reed and Kate go to Adams's office. It is a fact that Professor Adams could have stayed in his position for a long time. Butler, the security man, tells Kate that Adams was a sorry man.

Kate calls on Cecilia Adams, the widow. She claims that Adams had been canny. He spoke of possessing superior understanding. Cecilia is a relatively youthful second wife. She points out that since Canfield had been as protective of himself as a turtle there is little reason to believe his death was accidental. Kate attends an informal gathering of university women. She asks for help to solve the case and promises anonymity, discretion where required.

She is contacted by Penelope Constable, PC, who had had a personal encounter with the victim in the past. PC has a listing in WHO'S WHO. The encounter took place fifteen years earlier in Cambridge. It is possible Adams was lonely PC relates. There was a dalliance and then PC and Adams drifted apart. PC said that basically he was an unloving and untrusting man. PC, a novelist, tells Kate that she is involved in the long march through institutions.

Slowly Kate gets a feel for how the security of the large university is managed. Kate meets one of the sons of the victim, Lawrence Adams. He reports that his father had become a neoconservative. He was traumatized by Anti-Vietnam events.

One of the characters notes that endless committees have tried to find out who governs academic institutions. A friend tells Kate that the university asked her to take on the investigation because they knew it couldn't be solved. Sadly, though, someone else is pushed out a window and found near Riverside Drive.

Canny had flirted with younger women and was rude to older ones, Kate learns. He lied and blamed others for his mistakes. Kate is told by a former secretary in Adams's department that the ignorance of the faculty is exceeded only by their impatience. Kate considers the notion that in the beginning teaching dominates the academic's existence, but that after time passes politics, research and other matters become more predominant.

I won't detail the solution to the mysteries in order to preserve the reader's fun. This is an excellent crime novel.

Ms. Cross' exceptional insights into human nature continues in this novel. She has a way of "turning a phrase" in a concise and cogent manner. The plot is interesting, but it is her main character, Kate Fansler, whose understanding of human interaction and motivation makes this such an enjoyable book. One note to potential readers, I have a hardcopy version of the 1989 edition. My copy, less than 20 years old, already appears to be turning brown at the edges, thus if you are planning to purchase this title you may want to consider the paperback edition.

Women faculty and lethal politics and the wonder of Kipling: "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; . . . . If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!