Mystery writer # 11 : Amanda Cross

Title: In the last analysis
No. in series: 1
Year of publication: 1964
Type of mystery: murder, whodunnit
Type of investigator: amateurs
Setting & time: New York, 1960’s
Some themes: Psychoanalysis, murder, literature, university life

Story:
New York literature Professor Kate Fansler is shocked when a former student of hers is murdered on the couch of the psychoanalyst Kate recommended to her. What’s worse, the psychoanalyst, an old friend of Kate’s, is the police’s favourite suspect. Not trusting in the intelligence and experience of the police, Kate begins an investigation of her own, assisted by her nephew-in-law to-be who does the sleuthing, and a friend who is an assistant district attorney and has access to inside information about the investigation. Kate herself mostly does the thinking and the mental arithmetic involved in putting together the clues and finding a likely suspect and motive. This she does and arrives at a theory. Unfortunately she is, at first, unable to prove it, as the evidence is all circumstantial, but her ADA friend helps her to get hold of the one available piece of evidence the police need to turn their attentions to the real killer.

Review:
Amanda Cross (pseudonym), in real life a professor of literature herself, has been described as a literary feminist mystery writer, but I didn’t find much feminism in this book. Maybe it surfaces later in the series. Literature I did find, quotations in fact, and an accurate description of academic life, academic thinking processes and academic arrogance. Having experienced all these things as a student, it was interesting to see it from the point of view of a teacher.

As to characterisation, Kate is not a likeable character. She is arrogant, automatically assumes the police don’t know how to do their job, and barely hesitates to use her ADA friend to get access to classified information. She puts together her splendidly unlikely murder theory from some very tenuous threads that require a rather large jump to reach the conclusion.

The storytelling is ok, up until the point where Kate’s ADA friend breaks the law to get her the evidence she needs to prove the theory. In real life this would have meant that the evidence was inadmissible in court, but of course it doesn’t matter to the story, as she was simply trying to prove her friend didn’t commit the murder. Whether the killer gets away with it because of the lawless way in which the evidence was obtained is beside the point.

Cross’ books came highly recommended to me, but I must say this one is a disappointment. I plan to do a bit of research and try to find her most highly regarded mystery, to see if she deserved the praise.

Rating: A lusterless, undistinguished mystery. 2+ stars.

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...

Reading in Reykjavík

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