Amanda Cross. Sweet Death, Kind Death (1984) Another in Cross’s series about Kate Fansler, a well-married professor of English Literature at an unnamed New York university. This time Kate must discover whether the apparent suicide of Patrice Umphelby, a prominent history professor, was in fact a murder; which it was. The setting is Clare College, a small New England women’s college, so questions of women’s place, autonomy, scholarship, freedom and so on are central, as is the issue of “gender studies”; Kate’s cover will be membership on a “task force” struck to decide whether Clare should offer women’s studies courses. The impetus for investigation comes from a couple of charming young men who’ve been selected to write Patrice’s biography.
The plot, such as it is, is rather thin. Academic rivalry motivates the murder, and progress to the solution is more of a ramble than a search. What makes these books a pleasure to read is the level of conversation. It’s intelligent, witty, allusive, discursive, and as often as not about matters only peripherally connected to the case, such as marriage, mother-daughter relationships, love, the writing of books, the effects of aging, and so on. The epigraphs add to these pleasures.
The characters are too good to be true; the discreet references to Kate’s marriage to Reed, her lawyer husband; suggest a relationship satisfying in every way. Every character, even the bit player who helps Kate dig up some evidence in the dead of night, is intelligent and perspicacious, though not always as self-aware as they should be. But these paragons only increase the pleasures of reading.
One effect on me: I read some Virginia Woolf many years ago, and thought her too fey, neurasthenic, and self-centred by half. Reading the passages Cross chose for epigraphs, and the conversations about Woolf, makes me think I misestimated her. It’s not often a book makes me want to read something else entirely. For this too, I’m grateful to Cross. ***
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