Honest Doubt (Kate Fansler)

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