Honest Doubt

Rating:
Summary: an outsider's guide to an inside view of academia
Review: Amanda Cross has given us another enjoyable mystery, this time with P.I. Estelle " Woody" Woodhaven, who investigates the murder of an English professor. Filled with literary allusions from as varied figures as Tennyson and Christie, the pace of this novel is slow enough to be comfortable, yet gripping enough to carry the reader along. For those readers unfamiliar with academia, it will be informative as well, revealing not only the petty, small-minded rivalries among faculty colleagues, but also the disturbing trend of colleges churning out too many PhDs for the existing job market. (In scientific disciplines this has been the case for decades.)

We hear the inner narrative of Woody Woodhaven throughout, as she relies on her common sense, her intuitive skills and the techniques of interviewing she has developed. With the help of Amanda Cross's previously featured English professor, Kate Fansler, Woody is able to unravel the mystery.

Although Cross's attitudes toward family life, marriage and children will be unfathomable to many (as in her previous novels), both Kate and Woody escape the label "selfish"---if only just barely. Amanda Cross is the mystery-writer penname of Carolyn Heilbrun, a member of the early generation of modern feminists, who (perhaps understandably) overreacted against traditional female roles. In the quest for gender equality they tended to ignore their own physiology and hormonal make-up, which are geared for connectedness and for maternity. Even in the l970s few women advocated this radical stance. Modern day young women try to incorporate family life with the need for autonomy and self-espression. Despite her off-pitch attitude, Cross's novels are elegant, literate, and amusing.

Rating:
Summary: Honest Doubt
Review: Amanda Cross has given us another enjoyable mystery, this time with P.I. Estelle " Woody" Woodhaven, who investigates the murder of an English professor. Filled with literary allusions from as varied figures as Tennyson and Christie, the pace of this novel is slow enough to be comfortable, yet gripping enough to carry the reader along. For those readers unfamiliar with academia, it will be informative as well, revealing not only the petty, small-minded rivalries among faculty colleagues, but also the disturbing trend of colleges churning out too many PhDs for the existing job market. (In scientific disciplines this has been the case for decades.)

We hear the inner narrative of Woody Woodhaven throughout, as she relies on her common sense, her intuitive skills and the techniques of interviewing she has developed. With the help of Amanda Cross's previously featured English professor, Kate Fansler, Woody is able to unravel the mystery.

Although Cross's attitudes toward family life, marriage and children will be unfathomable to many (as in her previous novels), both Kate and Woody escape the label "selfish"---if only just barely. Amanda Cross is the mystery-writer penname of Carolyn Heilbrun, a member of the early generation of modern feminists, who (perhaps understandably) overreacted against traditional female roles. In the quest for gender equality they tended to ignore their own physiology and hormonal make-up, which are geared for connectedness and for maternity. Even in the l970s few women advocated this radical stance. Modern day young women try to incorporate family life with the need for autonomy and self-espression. Despite her off-pitch attitude, Cross's novels are elegant, literate, and amusing.

Rating:
Summary: What happened to Amanda Cross?
Review: Amanda Cross leaves behind Kate Fansler and introduces Estelle "Woody" Woodhaven, a private investigator of size in this outing. Fansler plays only a minor role, a transition role if you will, while familiarizing us with Woody. She accepts a case from some of the English Department faculty at a small New Jersey college, Clifton College. The head of the Lit Department has been murdered, and the faculty wants Woody to find out who - not so much because they care about the man, but to remove suspicion from themselves. But Woody quickly finds out that everyone, including his family, hated the deceased man, and everyone had a motive and the means. I am not sure that I believe that the detective assigned the case would be as cooperative as portrayed here, but I am willing to give Cross the benefit of the doubt. Cross ties up loose ends in the last dozen pages with a very unsatisfactory ending - as if she had gotten that far and could not figure out how to end the book. The book is well written - no doubt about that - although the reader is told, a few too many times for my taste, that Woody is fat, but other than that, this is a well-written book with a lousy ending

Rating:
Summary: Not up to Par
Review: As a long-time fan of Amanda Cross, I'm glad this isn't the first book of hers that I picked up. I liked the characters alright but I found the ending to be the most unsatisfactory of any book I've ever read.

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Summary: Burned-out Writer Steals Plot
Review: I have been an avid reader of Cross's work, and so was bitterly disappointed by her most recent novel. She must have been out of ideas because she stole a famous Agatha Christie plot. It was obvious to me about a third of the way in. That Cross gives credit to Christie by actually having the two detectives watch the movie that was made from the novel may have assuaged her conscience, but it made me want my money back. The plot worked barely in Christie's exotic setting. . . in the English department of a small college worked it was completely lacking in believability.

Rating:
Summary: Honest Doubt
Review: I was extremely disappointed in this book. Having read all of the previous mysteries written by Amanda Cross, I was looking forward to enjoying her literate and witty style, a thought-provoking plot and interesting character development. This book fails miserably in all three areas. The style is turgid, the plot is almost non-existent with a cop-out ending and the characters are one-dimensional (although I'm sure that Woody would say that she had more dimensions that that--I really did get weary of all the references to her size). I can only hope that the author will go back to creating a well-crafted mystery next time around. But I will first check with other reviewers before buying another book by Cross so that I'm not burned again by purchasing another such boring and poorly written myster.

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Summary: Really Disappointing
Review: I've not read Amanda Cross before, and if this is an indication of her work, it's probably a good thing. The character was kind of interesting, and with future books could be developed into one to look forward too. As I was reading it, I thought my biggest problem with the book would be it's slow-moving, rambling description of interviews with characters who started to run together. But by the time I got to the end, the bad ending dwarfed my earlier complaints. First, the "heroine" didn't figure out a darn thing--she had to be told "who did it". Which would be fine if the ending was explained better, there were some clues from the book that came together at the end. When stepping back and viewing the ending as a concept, it wasn't bad, but then the writing to get there was incredibly uninspired. I suspect that Amanda Cross must have written better books or she wouldn't be as popular as she is. Perhaps I'll read something else she's written just to see if this was a fluke. I would not encourage Amanda Cross fans or anyone for that matter (other than members of a collegiate English department, perhaps) to waste their time, money or anticipation on this book.

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Summary: Tennyson, Shmennyson!
Review: This is a light read--not much effort, not much depth. I picked it up because I've always found Carolyn Heilbrun (AKA Amanda Cross), an emeritus professor from Columbia U., intellectually stimulating. I was amazed to find her quoting a line of poetry-- "Ancestral voices prophesying war"--and attributing it to Tennyson. Well, I recognize that line, and it's not Tennyson, it's Samuel Taylor Coleridge--and it's from "Kubla Kan", not "In Memoriam." It's not just a typo--there's a story about Virginia Woolf attached to the quote, making it clear that Heilbrun simply doesn't know the two poems very well. If authors are going to include verifiable information in their works of fiction, I think they owe it to their readers to get the facts right.

Rating:
Summary: Bored out of my mind
Review: This was my first Amanda Cross, and my last. The main character in this book detective Woody is pretty much incompetent and continues to talk about her size, which starts to get old around page 30. I did not really care about who killed the professor, and pretty much found all of the characters in the book uninteresting. I couldn't wait to finish this slow story to move on to something I actually wanted to read.