Synopsis
Beneath its calm surface, controversy rages at the State University of Michigan. An outsider, Perry Cross, has been brought in to fill a quickly created tenure-track teaching position, a situation that fellow professor Nick Hoffman finds suspicious. But when Nick discovers that his longtime lover, writer Stefan Borowski, shares a past with Cross, Nick's curiosity about Cross begins to verge on obsession. Things only get worse when Cross is found murdered and Nick's jealous behavior and Stefan's past make them both prime suspects.
To clear both their names and resolve the questions surrounding the mysterious Cross, Nick investigates the murder, uncovering unpleasant secrets about his coworkers, superiors, and the university itself. As Nick attempts to unravel the mystery, his suspicions alarmingly turn close to home, and his own life is endangered.
Reviews
The ivory tower looks a bit chipped in Raphael's portrayal of a state university set in the fictional town of Michiganapolis. Nick Hoffman has everything he has ever wanted: a teaching job, a nice house, a solid relationship with his lover, Stefan Borowski, a brilliant novelist and the university's writer in residence. But when Perry Cross shows up, Nick's peace of mind is shattered. Not only does he have to share his office with the nefarious Perry, who managed to weasel his way into a tenured position without qualification, he also discovers that Perry played a destructive role in Stefan's past. Nick, who teaches basic writing courses, is a self-confessed gossip and isn't above creating a little drama of his own when Stefan invites Perry to dinner. The next morning, Perry turns up dead. Nick wonders if Stefan might have had something to do with it while the campus security force is wondering the same about Nick. Nearly all the faculty members and a couple of grad students have something unsavory in their pasts they'd rather not broadcast. Despite laying it on a bit thick with his narrating Nick (who immediately thinks of Ceausescu's overthrow in Bucharest when he sees a broken window), Raphael (Winter Eyes, 1992) delivers literate, witty, mildly suspenseful goods.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The State University of Michigan in Michiganapolis is exactly like your own alma mater. The chair of the English department is a bisexual harasser, the latest arrival a closeted gay male, the internal candidate he beat to the appointment a zestfully bitchy female, his other colleagues phony careerists and ex-Nazis. Only one of them, though, can have killed the newcomer, Perry Cross, and inoffensive Nick Hoffman is sure it isn't his lover, writer-in-residence Stefan Borowski. As long as Stefan's innocent, Nick doesn't care which of the others did it, and since there's no way to choose among the cast's shopworn secrets, you won't care either. As if to justify one character's sniffy claim that mysteries aren't real literature, Lambda-winner Raphael (Winter Eyes, 1992, etc.) salts this slender puzzle with allusions to Wilde, Cocteau, Henry James, Agatha Christie, and Moonstruck. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
English professor Nick Hoffman is mightily suspicious when obnoxious Perry Cross, with whom he has to share his office, is hired in a nontenured position with a tenure-track salary (i.e., more than his). When (before the semester is over) Cross turns up dead and a leading suspect in what soon seems to be murder is Nick's life partner, Nick becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about Cross and his murderer. Interestingly enough for followers of Raphael's career, Nick's partner is Stefan Borowski, protagonist of Raphael's enthralling first novel, Winter Eyes (1992). That book may have had its mysteries--Stefan's discoveries of his Jewishness and his gayness--but it was not a murder mystery. This book may be a murder mystery, but it is more rewarding when regarded as a lengthy monologue by a protagonist-narrator, Nick, whom some will find annoyingly chatty and self-absorbed but others will consider delightfully loquacious, if a trifle batty. Consider it a mystery for those who don't especially like mysteries. Ray Olson
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