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Feminist scholar (and senior citizen) Carolyn Heilbrun has been writing and lecturing for years about the unique freedom women gain from being old and thus "invisible" in our culture. Writing under the name of Amanda Cross, she continues to explore this theme in another of her popular academic mysteries featuring feminist professor Kate Fansler. In
The Puzzled Heart, Fansler's husband, Reed, has been kidnapped, and the ransom demand requires Kate to give up her left-leaning politics and join the Christian Right. Instead, Kate turns to septuagenarian detective Harriet Furst, a woman whose advanced age allows her to "move about the world unseen" as she gathers clues. It doesn't take long for Harriet to find Reed, but discovering who was behind the kidnapping proves more difficult. In the course of exposing the culprit, Cross entertains her audience with the kind of highly literate, witty writing and outspoken politics that have been hallmarks of Kate Fansler mysteries for the past 30 years.
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From Kirkus Reviews
Hold on to your hats: Kate Fansler's husband, law prof Reed Amhearst, has been kidnapped. If Kate doesn't publish a statement recanting the feminist positions she's long shared with her English-prof creator, Cross herself, or if she contacts the authorities, Reed will be killed. Kate's response: ``I hate people who use contact as a verb.'' Soldiering on with nary a split infinitive (though she does stop sipping single-malt in her anxiety), Kate--with the help of her p.i. friend Harriet Furst (An Imperfect Spy, 1995), Harriet's partner Toni Giomatti, and a St. Bernard puppy named Bancroft--wastes no time in locating Reed. But just as the happy couple is congratulating themselves on their near-painless escape from the outrage, and you're becoming convinced that this is another of the limp talkfests that have recently passed for mysteries among Cross's fans, there's a murderous attack in an unexpected quarter, and Kate and Reed have an urgent new reason to figure out who was behind the kidnapping. Wicked right-wing radicals looking to declaw and discredit Kate? A departmental colleague simmering with resentment? A spiteful woman from her distant past? Or a combination of all three? The answers are unguessable (despite Kate's iron principles, her creator still doesn't believe in clues) and unsatisfying, but they do allow a comprehensive tour of contemporary feminism's enemies that makes this Kate's most stimulating outing since The Players Come Again (1990). (Mystery Guild main selection) --
Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
This text refers to an alternate
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