Murder Uptown - Hardcover

Hill, Donna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0881847453 ISBN 13: 9780881847451

Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub, 1992

Synopsis

Well aware that a killer is stalking her, Melvina continues her investigation into the grisly circumstances surrounding the death of Professor Paul Baskin, and she begins to suspect that someone at the university is to blame.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Roiling academic politics at a fictional branch of the City University of New York set the scene for a reasonably competent, if unexciting debut mystery by the author of Joseph Smith: The First Mormon as well as several children's books. Sharp-eyed, soft-hearted, widowed sociology professor Vinnie Trent questions her colleagues under cover of arranging a memorial for Professor Paul Baskin, who was found in a garbage bag with a fatal head wound. Vinnie hopes to draw suspicion away from her friend Sterling Neu, in whose office she found a bloody paperweight. As Vinnie leans that Paul, a man she thought charming, was a self-serving bully and seducer, her suspects expand to include a luckless colleague up for tenure, an appealing young guard with a criminal record, an outlaw bag lady and a shy student impregnated by the victim. Vinnie's amateur-sleuth status forces her into some unlikely situations and readers will wonder why she never asks Sterling about the paperweight. Although Hill is stingy with clues, she nonetheless provides pleasant diversion.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Actually murder midtown, since Fuller College seems a dead ringer for Hunter, home to children's author Hill, who wields the conventions of the academic whodunit--who killed sarcastic, philandering Paul Baskin (Sociology) and stuffed his body into the cafeteria trash?-- with a torpid hand. Paul's colleague Melvina Trent chats up the excruciatingly familiar suspects--the unrequited love of Vinnie Trent's life; the junior colleague up for tenure; the pregnant grad student and her would-be champions; the perennial campus bag-lady; the secretaries and student guards who call every shadow ``Professor''- -while surviving two murderous, hokey assaults and proposing a third to trap a killer she can't identify ten seconds before the climactic attack. There's rough justice in the academic murders: better perish than publish such charmless stuff. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0881847453
• ISBN 13: 9780881847451
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216