Like all Kate Fansler//Amanda Cross books I enjoy my time with them as they ponder the questions before them and I like to snoop in on their conversations. After all, that is what these books are about, I feel, an excuse for having heady and knowledgable conversation about life, literature and re...
This book is interesting mostly as a thinly disguised rant, a fictional depiction of the world as seen through the eyes of Carolyn Heilbrun, the English professor who eventually disclosed her identity as the pseudonymous Amanda Cross.It's a world of old-boy networks in which women have to scratch...
(First reviewed at www.nowiamthirty.journoblog.net 7 February 2011)I don’t know who first warned society not to judge a book by its cover, but he was right. The Theban Mysteries contains in its title the word “mystery”, bears the logo of Virago Crime, and pegs the plot synopsis in the blurb on “a...
The first Kate Fansler Mystery. As is often the case, I am reading the series out of sequence. So, having read a couple of the later ones, and enjoyed them very much, I have come back to the earliest story. I have to say that I did not enjoy it as much as the later ones. I think the author must s...
I read these mainly because I had come to the end of all my Cross books (except for the very odd penultimate one), and was sad to have done so. In that context each story was a delight, a little like eating a very small box of very fine chocolates. I don't know what someone might make of these st...
In my ongoing search for books set in academia (because, you know, I don't spend enough of my time thinking about it), someone recommended Amanda Cross. So far, I'm a fan. While the mystery didn't grip me, and there were some sections of prose that seemed a bit heavy/overwritten, the pros outweig...