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Rating: 
Summary: Nancy Drew of the 90's
Review: I found the characters to be one-dimensional. They were either all good or all bad. As a result they did not seem real to me. Real people are more complex. I have been reading mystery novels for over 30 years and this one was one of the few that I found it difficult to keep my mind focused on.
Rating:
Summary: Boo... And NOT Boola-Boola
Review: I had misgivings about A DARKER SHADE OF CRIMSON, Pamela Thomas-Graham's first book, but it had enough going for it and seemed authentic enough that I was eager to read BLUE BLOOD, the Yale installment of her so-called Ivy League series. Pamela went to Harvard; I went to Yale. And I can only say I hope she did better by her own alma mater than she did by mine. Sorry, Pam, but you blew it. The book is a swift read, but mostly because it's so pat, so facile. Many of the details of the Yale campus and the city of New Haven are accurate, but so much is just wrong and sloppy and badly researched that it was hard to take anything seriously. One main character is described in one chapter as a stage manager at the Yale Rep and in a later chapter as a set designer (and his alibi for the night of the crime is that he was in NYC buying costumes). No, no and no. That's just bad research or bad writing. If you are going to write about a real place, you have the obligation to be accurate, and PTG is not. Designers at the Yale Rep are usually students at the Yale Drama School; a stage manager has nothing to do with designing the sets or the costumes; the set designer wouldn't go anywhere near the costumes; NO ONE in a professional theater company has time the day of an opening night to be hanging around their apartment watching Rikki Lake; and NO Yale Rep actress playing Lady Macbeth would arrive at the theater 40 minutes late because of a fight with a boyfriend. (Believe me, I've acted at the Yale Rep, and it is just way, way more professional than that... unlike Pamela Thomas-Graham's detective fiction, which is more like the self-congratulatory living-room showing off of a precious wunderkind than it is a Dashiell Hammet or Agatha Christie or Walter Mosley). But it's more than mismanaged details that deamage this book-and an apparently ongoing problem Pam T-G has with fully fleshed characters and/or time (this Nikki Chase detective does WAY too much on any given day to be believable): The plot turns on so many convenient coincidences that nothing is difficult enough to merit attention. Nikki has a penchant for overhearing conversations that explain plot points to her (and to the readers) that is just plain galling. Add to that the cardboard characters and the Introduction to Racism, Sexism, and Class in American Society "politics," and it's a pretty damn annoying book. I don't what Yale did to Pamela to make her hate it so much, but in my experience (five years at Yale and in New Haven), she has not only misunderstood the place, but misrepresented it, which is a shame because the Yale/New Haven social problem (rich school, poor town) is more than a matter of snobby White WASPS vs. oppressed people of color. The Yale I lived in was open and multicultural (and even THAT was 20 years ago). I think that if you are going to call a detective series the IVY LEAGUE series, you are also required to be smart, and these books are not nearly smart enough: Call them the Community College Wanna Be Ivy League series. The most damning thing I can think of to say is that they fail utterly at the one thing great detective fiction does well, which is walk a tightrope through murky moral territory. Everything in these books is too easy for economics professor turned sleuth Nikki Chase, and everything seems far too easy for writer Pamela Thomas-Graham. Apparently the next book in the series is about Princeton. Well, I know that campus, too, and I think I'll pass on Pamela's trashing of the place. I read a lot of mysteries, and I give any writer two chances to win me over. Pamela Thomas-Graham (even her name is annoying) has had her two chances with me. I assume that the glowing reviews by others are a sad indication of just how bad most books are, and how few works of fiction (and especially popular fiction) are willing to address race, class, and gender at all. But to be so glib, so pat, so easy on yourself as a writer as Thomas-Graham has been, helps nothing.
Rating:
Summary: Puzzled By Glowing Reviews
Review: I must say Blue Blood was a big disappointment... The pacing is good, and the Yale setting interesting, but Thomas's characters are one cardboard trope after another. She relies much too much on archetypes: the nosy amateur detective, the "things are not what they seem" academic, the repressed blue bloods, the obnoxious rich people, the chic and lovably eccentric grad student, the dysfunctional gay man, the angry activist, and the oversexed blonde. I cared little about any of the characters, felt almost no dramatic build-up, no tension, no suspense. Why have others lavished such praise on this barely adequate book? It's hard to take seriously a mystery that is prefaced by three pages of "acknowledgements" and ends with an extensive list of the author's non-literary achievements. Is Thomas's role as a trailblazer supposed to insulate her from criticism of her cliched characters and suspenseless plotting? I was a little put off by being reminded of how Thomas was the first this and the first that, and how she's on the board of this and on the committee for that. Who cares? She's not writing a memoir, she's writing a mystery novel. I hope she does better with her in-the-works Princeton mystery (which is based on the defection of Cornel West from Princeton to Harvard). As a minority alum of that school, I look forward to reading her spin on it--but I must say that my expectations are not high.
Rating: 
Summary: I can't wait to see the movie
Review: I usually don't like the idea of seeing my favorite murder mysteries turned into movies, but by the time I finished reading "Blue Blood", I was ready to go to the video store and rent the movie!(hope one is in the works) Not only was this a clever story, but it was great to see a smart Nikki Chase go head-to-head with rich Yale alums as well as aggressive black ministers without losing her sense of humor and without turning into a ball-busting man-hating woman. Nikki is classy, smart and very funny. I first heard of author Thomas-Grahm when People Magaizine picked her first book "Darker Shade of Crimson" as "page-turner of the month", but I figured she'd only be able to write about life at Harvard--where she went and where she set the first book. But I went to Yale, and I can tell you she really got our school right. I'm embarassed to say that I was one of those white Yalies who really was afraid of the black people who lived outside campus in New Haven. The author balances the race issues, class issues and a supremely clever murder of the blonde, conservative professor that we all kind of loved to hate. I'm looking forward to the next volume in the author's "Ivy League Mystery Books". My husband went to Dartmouth, so we'll be on the look out.
Rating: 
Summary: Relating quite well to Veronica
Review: In her first book a Darker Shade of Crimson there was some sense in the story because Nikki Chase was operating in her home environment. This book deals with a murder at Yale of a righr wing law professor. It is hard to understand why Nikki even was around. It also missed the interesting characters from the earlier effort. Nikki's boyfriend Dante is really hard to understand. He appears for no reason
All in all a book that is very hard to believe and is disappointing.
Rating: 
Summary: Nancy Drew
Review: Nancy Drew meets Quasimodo! Proceed at your own risk if you are over 12 years old or have an IQ over 80. Unless you are stuck at the Mexico City airport like I was and can't find anything else on the shelf. An author with her credentials should know better.
Rating: 
Summary: Blood On The Ivy
Review: Pamela Thomas-Graham offers the reader an exciting whodunit set within the ivied walls of Yale. Following the murder of a well known professor, a friend of her husband ? another professor -- comes from Harvard to see what she can learn of the murder. The character of Nikki Chase is especially well-crafted. A strong African American woman, she is not intimidated by the sacred ivy walls within which she finds herself investigating. A story that has an authentic feel to it with very human characters.
Rating:
Summary: Blood On The Ivy
Review: Pamela Thomas-Graham offers the reader an exciting whodunit set within the ivied walls of Yale. Following the murder of a well known professor, a friend of her husband  another professor -- comes from Harvard to see what she can learn of the murder. The character of Nikki Chase is especially well-crafted. A strong African American woman, she is not intimidated by the sacred ivy walls within which she finds herself investigating. A story that has an authentic feel to it with very human characters.
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