The Northbury Papers - Hardcover

Dobson, Joanne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385486936 ISBN 13: 9780385486934

Publisher: Doubleday, 1998

Synopsis

An ill wind blows through the groves of academe as English professor Karen Pelletier becomes embroiled in her second homicide investigation--in this sequel to the Agatha Award-nominated Quieter Than Sleep.

As the case progresses, Professor Pelletier--intrepid researcher, defender of women's rights, and soldier on the front lines of the fight for academic progress--finds herself doing battle not only with an unknown killer but also with her own department chair; being threatened by the president of the board of trustees; and falling victim to the aristocratic charms of her college president.

Any one of these peccadilloes, she realizes, might easily spell academic death to an untenured member of the faculty. And, in an ironic twist on the old professorial adage, it begins to look as if Karen's determination to publish (the biography of a woman whose writing her colleagues look upon as trash) might actually cause her to perish--professionally, and perhaps in the decidedly non-metaphoric sense as well.

Joanne Dobson's first novel, Quieter Than Sleep, introduced feisty young Professor Pelletier, the political battle at prestigious Enfield College, and a cast of memorable characters from outrageous academics to local police. With The Northbury Papers, Dobson provides an even more intricate mystery, and a sputtering cauldron of academic warfare that will delight old fans and win her a host of new ones, too.

About this title

About the Author

Joanne Dobson is Associate Professor of English at Fordham University. She is a former editor of Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers and the author of Dickinson and the Strategies of Reticence: The Woman Writer in Nineteenth-Century America. She lives in Westchester, New York, and is now at work on her third Karen Pelletier novel.

From the Back Cover

Praise for the first Karen Pelletier mystery, Quieter Than Sleep:

"Deftly balancing its literary and mystery elements, Dobson's debut sparkles with wit and insight into college politics. Readers academic and otherwise will look forward to the next adventure of smart and scrappy Karen Pelletier."
--Publishers Weekly

"Anyone who thinks that the word 'academic' is synonymous with 'detached' needs to read Professor Dobson's tale of seething passions and deadly animosities within the English Department of Enfield College."
--Laurie R. King

"A genuinely good read."
--Time Out New York

From the Inside Flap

blows through the groves of academe as English professor Karen Pelletier becomes embroiled in her second homicide investigation--in this sequel to the Agatha Award-nominated <i>Quieter Than Sleep.</i><br><br>As the case progresses, Professor Pelletier--intrepid researcher, defender of women's rights, and soldier on the front lines of the fight for academic progress--finds herself doing battle not only with an unknown killer but also with her own department chair; being threatened by the president of the board of trustees; and falling victim to the aristocratic charms of her college president.<br><br>Any one of these peccadilloes, she realizes, might easily spell academic death to an untenured member of the faculty. And, in an ironic twist on the old professorial adage, it begins to look as if Karen's determination to publish (the biography of a woman whose writing her colleagues look upon as trash) might actually cause her to perish--professionally, and perhaps in the decidedly non-m

Reviews

Contradicting the joke that academic infighting is so fierce because the stakes are so small, a $10 million bequest may figure in murder at prestigious northeastern Enfield College. English professor Karen Pelletier (introduced in Quieter Than Sleep, 1997) decides to study the work of Serena Northbury, a 19th-century novelist considered trashy in her time. Pelletier, who advocates adding unheralded women and minority authors to the traditional literature curriculum, befriends the elderly and ailing Dr. Edith Hart, Northbury's great-granddaughter. Hart gives Pelletier access to her musty collection of Northbury writings and mementos. When Hart dies suddenly, police suspect foul play despite her old age and diabetes. Even Pelletier might have a motive, because Hart changed her will, leaving $10,000,000 to Enfield if Karen directs a research center devoted to Northbury. The windfall infuriates college trustee Thibault Brewster, a Hart relative who wanted more for himself. Brewster's son, known as Tibby II, disrupts one of Pelletier's classes and harasses a black female student. To such academic intrigues are added murder, missing manuscripts, the riddle of a baby picture from long ago and the news that Pelletier's former boyfriend is getting married. By the time this entertaining tale has revealed the full complement of small-mindedness on the Endicott campus, the unacademic local homicide detective, Piotrowski, is looking very appealing.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In her second Professor Pelletier outing, real-life Fordham University English professor Dobson has her thirtysomething literary and criminal sleuth on the trail of the life of forgotten 19th-century woman writer Serena Northbury. In the midst of her search she stumbles on a descendant of Northbury and a possible lost novel that has the heirs salivating and leads to murder. While unraveling Northbury's own mystery?no mere trashy novelist, she was a suffragist and abolitionist as well?Pelletier manages to survive the culture wars in her own elite New England college and discover the murderer, too. A wonderful send up of the old vs. new college guard and a decent mystery as well, this is a good follow-up to Quieter Than Sleep (Doubleday, 1997).?Francine Fialkoff, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this third installment in the series, Karen Pelletier, English professor and reluctant sleuth at the lovely New England campus of Enfield College, really comes into her own. Pelletier has been researching the life of nineteenth-century writer Serena Northbury. Then she meets elderly and spirited Dr. Edith Hart, great-granddaughter of the novelist and owner of a splendid home called Meadowbrook. Rummaging produces letters, an unpublished Northbury manuscript, and the photograph of a beautiful brown child wearing a gold filigree heart. Then Hart dies suddenly, and Pelletier finds that Meadowbrook and a great deal of money have been left to Enfield. Complications ensue: threatened lawsuits; recalcitrant students (the son of a trustee, of course); a colleague's unplanned pregnancy; and another death focus Pelletier on the manuscript, which details a forbidden, interracial romance. Few are better than Dobson at recording the minutiae of academic committee-speak, power plays in body language and jargon, and what ignites a classroom. She has a fine gift for locking an attitude into a phrase, as in "he reeked of Eau de WASP." There is a range of attractive and offensive characters, attention paid to what is on the body and on the CD player, and enough random musings to amuse and enchant the hell out of readers. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The bookplate was ornate in the nineteenth-century manner, a rich  cream-colored rectangle with a wide border of morning glories and tangled  vines. In Gothic lettering it read Ex Libris Mrs. Serena Northbury.  I closed the book and turned it over to look at the title. Mrs.  Northbury's bookplate was affixed to the inside front cover of a  well-preserved, half-morocco-bound copy of Charlotte Brontë's Jane  Eyre.

"Wow," I said to Jill, "where'd you get this?"

Jill Greenberg slid her tray across the Faculty Dining Commons table,  pushed the unruly red hair back from her forehead, and sat down next to  me. "You know that antiquarian bookstore in Pittsfield, the one on North  Street?"

I nodded, fanning lightly through the pages in search of any possible  Northbury artifacts; you never know what you'll find preserved between the  pages of an old book.

"Well, I was browsing there with . . . well, I was browsing, and the  cover caught my eye. Then I saw Serena Northbury's bookplate and knew  you'd be interested. It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yeah, they really knew how to make books in those days." The title was  stamped in gold on the leather-bound spine of this one, and the dark blue  covers were spackled in green. "A lot of the time it didn't much matter  what was inside, but the book itself had to be a work of art." Finding no  treasures between the ragged-edged pages, I handed the volume to Jill.

She pushed it back toward me with both hands. "Keep it, Karen." She  picked up her ham and Swiss on rye and nibbled. "You're probably the only  person left in the entire universe who cares about Northbury."

"Jill, I can't take this." I wanted the book. It had been owned--been  touched, been read--by a nineteenth-century American novelist with  whom I was becoming increasingly fascinated. But I couldn't afford to  indulge myself in luxuries. On the scale of professional salaries, English  professors rank just slightly above church mice, and the average church  mouse isn't paying tuition for a daughter studying premed at Georgetown.  "This must have cost a fortune."

"Nah." Money was never an object with Jill. It had never had to be; she  was the daughter of a Park Avenue psychiatrist. A psychopharmacologist,  yet. The streets of the Upper East Side are paved almost entirely in  Prozac, and Papa had a great deal of money in his pocket. At the age of  twenty-five, Jill had no education debts, and no one but herself to lavish  her salary on. "It wasn't that much. The book dealer said the book wasn't  a first edition or a particularly valuable one, so basically he was just  charging for the binding."

"Well," I said. "If you're sure . . ." I turned the handsome volume  around and ran my forefinger over the gilt lettering of the title. "I'm a  little surprised to find that Northbury read Jane Eyre. Her own  novels are nothing like it. They're really quite--well--sentimental. But  they're so interesting. . . ."

"'Interesting,' my foot. Why don't you just admit you like trash?"

"It's not trash." I felt defensive; the grip Serena Northbury had on my  imagination wasn't easily explained by any of the usual literary or  feminist rationales. Northbury wasn't a great prose stylist, and she  certainly wasn't a flamboyant feminist rebel. Her forty best-selling  novels were conventional tales of young girls who face hardship and moral  danger, but through unassailable virtue and mind-boggling diligence win  out in the end.

I could relate to that; it sounded like my own life. Well . . . maybe not  unassailable virtue.

"I know she's no Brontë," I admitted, "but there's something quirky  in her stories. I don't know how to describe it, but I think I'm  addicted."

Jill laughed and took a second bite of her sandwich. "A Ph.D. in lit,  huh? A professor at Enfield, one of New England's most respected colleges?  Karen Pelletier, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

"Come on, Jill. You of all people should know popular literature is a  perfectly legitimate field of study." Jill is a sociologist, and literary  studies are becoming more like a branch of the social sciences every day.  "I'm simply reconstructing cultural conditions of literary reception."  Yeah. Right. I had read every one of Serena Northbury's books I could get  my hands on. Her popular novels enthralled me in the same way they must  have captivated her multitudes of nineteenth-century readers.

"Lighten up, Karen. Face it; you're reading garbage!" Jill was joking;  with a tattoo just above her left ankle and a gold ring where she didn't  talk about it, Jill was a pop culture nut.

I lightened up. "Yeah, Jill, you're right. I'm a lowbrow." I stroked the  copy of Jane Eyre as if it were still warm from Mrs. Northbury's  hand, and set it down next to my plate. "Thanks for this. I owe you."

Jill made a dismissive motion with a hand that wore a half dozen silver  rings and took another nibble of the sandwich. I picked up my mug of black  coffee--I needed a jump start before I went into the classroom--and  glanced at Jill over the rim.

My young colleague wasn't looking her best. I was used to the untamable  red hair and the funky clothes--today a short, sleeveless cotton shift in  a turquoise-and-lime flying-toasters print worn with black Converse  basketball sneakers and one dangling garnet earring--but the mouselike  appetite and the listless expression were something new. Jill Greenberg  usually had the appetite--and the brute energy--of an adolescent hockey  player.

"You okay, Jill?" I buttered my crusty whole-wheat roll and took a  bite.

"I'm fine." Her tone was abrupt. "I'm just a little tired is all." She  put the nibbled half sandwich back on her plate, aligned it with its  untouched mate, and pushed the plate away. "And the food here gets worse  every day."

The food in the Enfield College faculty dining room is okay. It's  more than okay. It's downright good. And most days Jill  proved that by putting away a full dinner entree at noon and then topping  it off with a sundae from the self-service ice-cream bar. For a college  professor--even for the child prodigy she was--Jill usually ate, well,  prodigiously. I narrowed my eyes at her. Something was definitely wrong.  Could Jill be having boyfriend trouble? As far as I knew, she hadn't been  seeing anyone lately. Come to think of it, though, with Jill, that in  itself was worth notice.

"Jill?" I ventured.

But she was gazing past me. "Karen, don't look now, but something weird  is going on over at the Round Table."

I immediately swiveled around and stared.

The large round table in the far corner of the Faculty Commons is  reserved for group luncheon meetings. On Thursdays, for instance, it's the  women's studies table; once or twice a month, black studies has dibs on  it. Today it was crowded with college administrators and department heads.  From where I sat I couldn't see everyone, but it would have been  impossible to miss Miles Jewell, English Department chair. Miles was  holding forth in a voice that had begun to rise beyond a decorous decibel  level. He was ignoring President Avery Mitchell's attempts to quiet him.  His round face was even more flushed than usual, and a cowlick of thick  white hair had flopped down boyishly over the ragged white eyebrows.  Halfway across the large dining room I could hear the outraged tones of  Miles's protest--something about insupportable assault on traditional  standards.

"Karen, don't gape."

Jill was right; I was gawking with prurient curiosity as my department  head made a public spectacle of himself. I turned back to my tablemate.  "That's a pretty high-powered bunch there, and they don't look like happy  campers."

"Sure don't. I wonder what's going on. Look--I mean, don't you  look, for God's sake; you're too obvious. I'll tell you what's  happening. Now Avery's got the floor. The voice of sweet reason, as usual.  God, he's a beautiful man. Those hands--like a concert pianist. Oh,  baby--he can play me anytime. Now Miles is sulking. You know how  pink his face is? Well, now it looks like a humongous strawberry.  Jeez, I hope he doesn't have a coronary. Sally Chenille is jabbering on  now, probably "interrogating the erotic subtext' of something or other."  Jill laughed. "You should see Sally's hair--no, Karen, don't turn around.  I'll tell you. Today, Professor Chenille's hair is a lovely Day-Glo  orange, a very, very nice visual contrast to Miles's  strawberry--no--raspberry complexion. Okay, now your pal Greg  Samooria...

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385486936
• ISBN 13: 9780385486934
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288