Honest Doubt (Kate Fansler Novels) (Hardcover)

by Amanda Cross (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Amanda Cross (nom de plume of Columbia University professor Carolyn Heilbrun) and her elegant academic detective, Kate Fansler, have long been considered the doyennes of the literary mystery. Murder, blackmail, and theft are the unsavory but intriguing cornerstones of their ivory towers, and Cross ruthlessly exposes the vagaries of university life, with its (admittedly stereotyped) pretentious professors and impenetrable literary tomes. But with a dozen Fansler mysteries under her belt, Cross is introducing a new force to the groves of academe. "Woody" Woodhaven is a former New York defense attorney who's decided she prefers the private investigator's life, with its independence and authority (and, as she readily admits, she's got a lot of weight to throw around).

Clifton College has hired Woody to find out who has "rushed Charles Haycock into shuffling off his mortal coil." A conceited old bigot whose love of Tennyson was matched only by his hatred of women, Professor Haycock took a sip of a cocktail that was equal parts retsina and digitalin. When the police receive a letter blaming one of Haycock's English department colleagues, the department decides to do its own sorting of skeletons and asks Woody to do a bit of surreptitious closet cleaning. Baffled by the abstruse jargon and petty territoriality of the suspects, Woody turns to Kate Fansler for help. Could Haycock's passion for Tennyson really have been a motive for murder? Are departmental politics just so much hot air and venom, or do they mask a killing agenda?

Woody is charming, funny, and sardonic, big and strong enough to carry the burden of a heavy plot. More is the pity, then, that Honest Doubt is a relative lightweight. Cross seems rather more interested in having Woody sing Kate's praises than in the niceties of motive and character construction. All due respect for the doughty Professor Fansler, but for a novel that makes so much of its heroine's ample girth, most readers will find themselves wishing for a bit more meat on the story's bones. --Kelly Flynn

From Publishers Weekly
In her 13th Kate Fansler novel (after The Puzzled Heart), Cross lets her mask of pseudonymity slip, building her plot and characters out of the myriad impressions of vicious, small-minded academic infighting she has amassed as the real-life Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Columbia University humanities prof and past president of the Modern Language Association. Introducing a new investigator, heavy, mid-30ish, motorcycle riding PI Estelle "Woody" Woodhaven, Cross pulls Fansler onto the sidelines to serve as charming adviser in a murder case set at insular, fictitious Clifton College in New Jersey. When Charles Haycock, a reactionary Tennyson scholar, drops dead at a Christmas party, poisoned via an overdose of heart medicine placed in his private bottle of Greek retsina, Woody is hired by Clifton's English department to find the killer. Soon she turns to Fansler in despair at academicians' double-talk. In a gentle, courtly style that rubs off awkwardly on the much-younger Woody, college professor Fansler shares her rueful insights into the bias and petty tyrannical old-boying that has mired contemporary academia in irrelevance and mediocrity. As wry and charming as Fansler is, however, Woody's exasperation soon rubs off on the reader. Virtually all the characters Woody interviews end up spouting off about what a dull and noxious little bog Clifton College is. All agree that the dead man was so sexist and such a nut that the world is better off without him. Alas, the redoubtable Cross has produced a kind of mystery emeritus, a meandering reflection on a kind of cultural crime that cannot be satisfyingly solved. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (November 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345440110
• ISBN-13: 978-0345440112
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,971,052 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Honest Doubt, January 14, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Honest Doubt (Mass Market Paperback)

I was extremely disappointed in this book. Having read all of the previous mysteries written by Amanda Cross, I was looking forward to enjoying her literate and witty style, a thought-provoking plot and interesting character development. This book fails miserably in all three areas. The style is turgid, the plot is almost non-existent with a cop-out ending and the characters are one-dimensional (although I'm sure that Woody would say that she had more dimensions that that--I really did get weary of all the references to her size). I can only hope that the author will go back to creating a well-crafted mystery next time around. But I will first check with other reviewers before buying another book by Cross so that I'm not burned again by purchasing another such boring and poorly written myster.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Read Batya Gur's "Literary Murder" Instead, I beg YOU, December 5, 2000

By	"jhc26not" (Bennington, Vermont) - See all my reviews

I've enjoyed Kate Fansler and her detective work, so I jumped to buy this book, just out. Woefully disappointed. There is no depth of character, not in the narrator nor in Kate. There is no "sitting at the edge of your seat" (or bed) here. It's all tedium punctuated by long disquistions on being fat. Very definitely not up to par. Ironically, I had recently re-read some of Batya Gur's mysteries. In hers, there are echos of P.D. James'--with those wonderful multi-layered characters who are fascinating unto themselves and not one-dimensional, not boring. I hate to damn a writer that I've enjoyed over the years but this is simply NOT a compelling read. The writer was clearly tired as was her prose. Sorry to report the above, but look elsewhere for good mystery and high drama.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Hello Woody, Goodbye Kate, January 23, 2001

By A Customer

As an avid mystery reader, I grabbed Amanda Cross' "Honest Doubt" hoping to find something literate and engaging. The Cover read 'A Kate Fansler Novel," whom I hoped to add to my list of must-read dectectives. What I found was Estelle "Woody" Woodhaven a fat female detective hired to solve the murder of a pretentious Professor of English Literature. Woody enlists Kate's help to solve the murder as she feels totally out of her league in Academia. While Woody's constant references to her size is annoying;it is her worship of Kate's intellect that eventually made this novel a real bore. One wonders how Woody made it through Law School. The characters are annoying and poorly drawn and the plot convoluted. I Would like to see Woody's Character in another novel sans Kate and with less reference to her size.