In the Last Analysis

Professor Kate Fansler spends her days teaching English literature to graduate students and researching 19th Century authors, but that does not mean she isn’t sociable and au courant with contemporary life. When one of her students asks her for a referral to a psychoanalyst, she sends the young woman to her friend and ex-lover Emmanuel Bauer, but when seven weeks later the woman is found dead on Dr. Bauer’s therapy couch, Kate knows she must investigate, for the police are surely ready to assume that the most obvious suspect is the killer…. The Kate Fansler books were written between the 1960s and early 2000s, by an author who herself was a university professor and feminist scholar (real name Carolyn Heilbrun), but I had never show more come across them until a friend recently recommended this series to me. I liked the intellectual content of this book, the first in the series, in that the author assumes a certain level of education in her readers, but at the same time this is by no means a dry academic tome, instead it sparkles with wit and humour. I don’t know if the secondary characters here (Dr. Bauer and his wife, and Reed Amhearst, Assistant District Attorney) will be present in future books, but I hope so as I like them all and they work well together in the sleuthing business; recommended! show less

When a student asks English professor Kate Fansler to recommend a psychoanalyst, Kate naturally gives the student the name of her good friend, Dr. Emanuel Bauer. Weeks later, student Janet Harrison is found dead in Dr. Bauer's office, having been stabbed while she sat on her analyst's couch. Knowing Emanuel as she does, Kate is certain that he could not have committed the crime. As it is apparent that the police are not looking any further for a suspect, Kate takes it upon herself to investigate her student's death and find the real culprit.

The book started out slowly for me, but I began to connect with Kate about halfway through the book. Cross gently pokes fun at both psychoanalysis (all the rage when the book was first published in show more 1964) and academia, not in a cruel way, but almost lovingly, like one family member would tease another. I found the solution to the mystery to be far-fetched, but since I enjoyed the characters so much, I plan to keep reading this series. show less

I like the Kate Fansler books because of the wonderful literary English; also, frankly, I envy Kate because she always has a witty and biting bon mot. I can never think of these things until later. This isn't the best of the Kate Fanslers, but it's the first, and it has the usual good plotting - I didn't see the resolution coming at all.

It has been more than a decade since the last time I read the series of which this is the first, and the reread has been an odd and interesting experience. Many of the details and attitudes are dated but dated in a way that made me think at least as much as they irked me. I enjoy being bombarded by the constant literary allusions and I enjoy the baroque prose. I will keep this book as long as the poor paper holds together and hope that there is an ebook version available by the time it disintegrates.

It took me over forty years from its publication to read one of Amanda Cross’ Kate Fansler mysteries, and I’m sorry I waited. I enjoyed the erudite conversation, a little pompous at times, but then I like Dorothy Sayers too. It’s a period piece now, with Sixties conventions and prejudices, but that really isn’t a negative or a positive. What matters is the puzzle and its solution, and while I can’t say that this is a masterpiece of plotting, the details of the “perp” and the motive are sufficiently obscure until the end that it’s fun. In retrospect, the motive is fanciful, or at least highly unlikely, but it was a good, quick read.

Clearly written by an academic. A fun mystery. Not a lot of real evidence, primarily intuition. I enjoyed it. Not a quick read. The language slowed me down some. Some references were dated.

"Amanda Cross" writes prose in which she and her characters place a premium on sounding clever. Sometimes they do sound clever, but so what? Cross is an unbearable snob: for her, any person not a member of the intelligentsia is an idiot. She is unable to hide her bigotry and ignorance, and unaware of those things in herself.