Little Miss Evil: A Nick Hoffman Mystery - Hardcover

Raphael, Lev

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802733425 ISBN 13: 9780802733429

Publisher: Walker & Co, 2000

Synopsis

Nick Hoffman has unsettling thoughts when some cryptic messages show up in his mail box followed shortly thereafter by the discovery of a corpse.

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Reviews

Lev Raphael's Little Miss Evil is a non-traditional mystery of surprising depth, a book with a flippant exterior enriched by unexpectedly moving explorations of the narrator's emotional life. It is also a gentle-spirited, genuinely funny novel of modern manners.

Professor Nick Hoffman's fall semester gets off to a rocky start in the fourth of Raphael's amusing academic mysteries (The Death of a Constant Lover, etc.). When arrogant, bestselling author Camille Cypriani, "a cross between Anita Brookner and Judith Krantz," receives an endowed chair at the State University of Michigan, the normally rancorous English department turns into a festering zone of envy and resentment. The high-salaried appointee's office displaces a beloved, small library, while other professors are shunted to windowless quarters in the basement. Meanwhile, someone in the department is harassing Nick with threatening messages and vandalism; his lover, Stefan, the writer-in-residence, is in a funk over Camille's appointment and his own less-than-stellar sales; Nick's favorite cousin is facing risky surgery to remove a tumor near her brain; and Nick himself becomes confused when he finds himself attracted to the loud and sexy (and very female) professor of Canadian literature. The campus situation worsens when the university president speaks out for the creation of a Department of White Studies, setting off faculty and student protests. Nick and Stefan survive the upheaval in style and solve the inevitable murder of the resented new colleague. This satire of academia is an enjoyable diversion, despite its uneven, late-developing plot, its flat characterizations of Nick's co-workers-cum-murder suspects, and its author's tendency to stud his prose with glib name-dropping instead of substantive detail. Agent, Curtis Brown Ltd. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The fourth in Raphael's Nick Hoffman series is set once again at the mythical State University of Michigan, where hordes of academics equivalent to migrant workers labor as teaching assistants, adjuncts, and gypsy scholars officed in mildewed basements. Add a few tenured professors, all eager to claw up the ladder, preferably by stepping on someone else's head, and you have only to throw in fat, ugly, stupid, and badly dressed administrators to round out the cast of Raphael's usual suspects. These vipers in the grove academe are seething with envy as Camille Cypriani, best-selling trash novelist, is awarded a well-endowed chair. Her arrival coincides with threats to Nick in the form of cryptic messages, a burnt-out mailbox, and a vandalized office. A corpse seems destined to appear, but the long-awaited murder occurs more than three-quarters of the way into the book, with Nick's deduction close on its heels--dubious pacing that flies in the face of murder mystery traditions. Raphael should re-think this departure from form in forthcoming books. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Because of previous sleuthing at the State University of Michigan (The Death of a Constant Lover), professor Nick Hoffman finds himself out of favor with the administration but popular with students. Who, then, is responsible for the threatening notes, the smoke-scented paperback, the immolated mailbox, and the vandalized office? Gossip, conjecture, and fidgeting ensue as Nick, longtime partner Stefan, and ex-model cousin Sharon try to figure things out. Only when bitter resentment over departmental politics erupts in murder does all become clear. Raphael compensates for a skimpy plot with an overextended exposition; however, this series addition will still appeal to fans.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Walker & Co
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802733425
• ISBN 13: 9780802733429
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 187