An imperfect spy [Import] [Hardcover]

Amanda CROSS (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Virago Press; 1st.ed. edition (1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1860491200
• ISBN-13: 978-1860491207
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,650,324 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.

1.0 out of 5 stars An Imperfect Spy, July 29, 2010

By 

Gail Rodgers "moonwishes" (North East, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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

What a strange yet boring book. Mostly it blathers on about feminism. Has as it's main character a woman that 'doesn't believe in vacations', who has a rather strange relationship with her husband who happily puts up with her. She is on sabbatical and agrees to help teach a combined law and literature class at a very conservative law school. Some of the students get upset with the class and for some reason keep locking them in. Do they report it to the faculty for disciplinary action against the students--nope. She and the other professor decide to cope with it on there own. There is no mystery in the book. To me the only mystery is why it got published in the first place and why it has glowing review blurbs on the cover and front page from authors I enjoy and respect. I wonder if they even read the book.

When I read a mystery book, I don't expect to be confronted with NO mystery AND a tirade on feminism. A hint of it maybe to give substance to a character definitely, but it has no place in what should be classed as a cozy mystery (assuming there had been one).