An Imperfect Spy

Kate Fansler had passed the statistical point of midlife. Nostalgia may be a disabling pressure that signifies retreat. Kate addresses the parents at her old school, the Theban. At the event she is challenged by a secretary from Schuyler Law School that she has never really done anything for the dispossessed, marginal individual. Reed is to start a clinic at Schuyler Law School. The woman from the secretarial room at Schyler appears in the apartment building of Kate and Reed. She claims her presence proves her point that middle-aged women are invisible. The woman claims that reading John LeCarre has convinced her to become a spy. The woman has disappeared, shedding her identity. Prior to that she was a professor. The woman calls herself Harriet. Harriet has pursued the couple for reason of Kate's crime-solving reputation. She wants them to investigate the death of a woman professor at Schuyler Law School. Kate meets the faculty member who is to co-teach her literature and law seminar. Kate is seeking a pleasant change from MIDDLEMARCH. Trying to understand the men she meets at Schuyler, Harriet tells Kate that she has never met a group of bonded males swollen with mediocrity and power. Talking to her male colleague she comes to understand that he has crossed the line, he knows why a women's movement exists. Contemplating the death of the female faculty member causes Kate to go into her investigative mode. Kate goes to see the brother of the dead woman, Nellie Rosenbach. In the end the mystery surrounding the Harriet character is disclosed. This book includes the battered woman syndrome and a host of feminist issues. This may be Carolyn Heilbrun's best Amanda Cross offering.

Kate and Reed are invited to teach for a semester at a mediocre law school in the city. There are no women tenured on the faculty, the only one was hit by a truck. Another faculty member's wife is in prison for shooting her abusive husband in the chest, ending a long history of abuse. The faculty made sure she got the maximum. Reed is to start a legal clinic for the students and Kate is co teaching a course on literature and the law.This was a pretty good Fansler mystery. Kate never seems to have to teach at her own university anymore. The characters are interesting and so is the mystery. One point, the prison on Staten Island, Arthur Kill by name, does not have any women in it. Bedford Hills or Taconic in Westchester are not all that far away and would have been better choices.

Her best and that's good

The challenge of white male power in a Law School. Citations from John LeCarre. And A. N. Wilson's words: "Where mediocrity is the norm, it is not long before mediocrity becomes the ideal." And John Le Carre: "I invested my life in institutions - he thought without rancor - and all I am left with is myself."