Professor Kate Fansler takes over a house in the countryside to sort through the correspondence between a deceased publisher and the luminaries he published, including James Joyce. She also reluctantly takes on her nephew, a troubled young boy who, it is hoped, will thrive with the undivided attention of a tutor. She also has an assistant in her literary work, and a visitor in the shape of assistant district attorney Reed Amhearst, along with two invited guests, both female professors at the end and the beginning of their careers respectively. When a local woman who is notorious for her unpleasant personality dies, accidentally shot to death by the tutor using a gun that had never previously held live bullets, Kate feels that she must find out who loaded the gun in order to save her household from ignominy at the very least….This is the second Kate Fansler mystery, published in 1967, and it’s quite a delight, especially in terms of the language. The characters spend pages chatting about obscure stories by James Joyce, the realm of academia and other esoteric matters. At the same time, the difference in attitudes between the 1960s and the 2020s is striking: for example, after Reed has proposed to Kate (and been turned down), and they have an argument about how best to deal with the legal situation, he notes that they should marry because “if it’s not exactly legal to beat your wife, it’s less illegal than to beat a woman to whom you’re not related in any way.” This is presented as banter, but it is also an example of how such treatment of women was condoned in the United States in 1967. Chilling. Such commentary on my part aside, however, this is quite a fun read; recommended, keeping in mind that the world was indeed a different country then. ( )

Kate Fansler in country house with nephew and two grad. students involved with murder over lost Joyce manuscript

This was the among most upbeat of the Kate Fansler books, and a pleasure to read. ( )

A highly improbable theft and murder is solved by Kate Fansler, professor/sleuth, and her admiring assistant DA. While aspiring to the literate mystery pioneered by Dorothy Sayers, Amanda Cross wrote dialogue that no one would ever have spoken. All the characters seem to have memorized copious quantities of literature in order to produce pithy comments on cue. The mid-Sixties social and sexual mores give a rather quaint feel to the situations in the mystery, as well. I felt like I was reading an anthropological study of mid-century New York intelligentsia as much as a mystery. ( )

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