The Edge of Doom

Kate Fansler was surprised to hear from her oldest brother, Laurence. Laurence told her she had a lot in common with Edith Wharton. Laurence said that Edith Wharton had had no children and had love affairs. Laurence was making a parallel between the gap in ages Edith Wharton and her brothers and Kate and her brothers and the question of paternity such a circumstance might suggest. Laurence claimed that Kate's real father had come to his office the other day. The man had suggested that the matter could be settled through DNA testing. The man did seem to be her father. His name was Jay Smith. There was a resemblance. he was an architect. Talk of DNA in police dramas, LAW AND ORDER, caused Smith to come forward he claimed. It is wondered if discovering a relationship so late in life should make a difference. Kate's husband wants to investigate further. Jay supplied Reed with a resume. Jay had guessed why Reed wanted to see him. Kate's mother had been tolerant. She had permitted Kate to grow up and become the woman and have the career that suited her. Next Jay Smith disappears. Jay may have used another man's career to prepare his resume. A note from Jay said to tell Reed it was not as bad as it looked. Later Kate heard from all three of her outraged brothers. To recover from the meeting with the brothers, Kate and Reed went to the Frick. They discovered that Jay had been in the Witness Protection Program. As suddenly as he disappeared Jay reappeared. He said that someone was trying to kill him. Restoration work in New York City can get really nasty. Jay had become the accomplice of an art thief. In the 1970's art theft became a federal crime. Jay Smith's name was phoney, his real name was Dyson, and so he really did not fake his career on his resume, he was the other man, Dyson. The book mentions a lecture on Shakespeare's comedies of forgiveness. Kate asked the lecturer that if a father sought a lost daughter was he unconsciously seeking redemption. Kate sought permission from Laurence to read her mother's notebooks. The information contained in the notebooks was not germane to the search. Reed and Kate developed a plan to get Jay out of their apartment safely. Unfortunately Jay does get kidnapped. Kate discovered her Fansler father knew all along that his paternity was bogus. Jay had gotten stuck in a long ago passion, like a fly in amber. Then Jay was out of her life. His story and his motives for his conduct were mixed. Kate could say that nothing violent had happened. The writing is bright, serviceable and the plotting adequate. The motivations of the characters are muddled, perhaps as they are in real life.

Those of us who are fans of this bibliophile's dream of a series remember that amateur detective Kate Fansler played a more or less peripheral role in Amanda Cross' last novel, "Honest Doubt", which precipitated her new heroine, feisty PI Estelle 'Woody' Woodhaven, head first (and over her head without Kate's help) into murder in academia. Hopefully, we have not seen the last of Woody, but what a joy it is to have Kate take center stage again in "The Edge of Doom". As Kate well might put it about her Cross progenitor, "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety." With her usual panache, she has presented Kate with a fascinating and almost diabolical problem: a possible case of mistaken identity...her own. Kate, as the youngest Fansler child, has always felt herself something of a changeling in the family structure, alienated from their stuffy conventionalism by her own far more liberal attitudes, behaviors and beliefs. However, when her oldest brother Lawrence brings her the startling news that she may not legitimately be a Fansler at all; that one Jason E. Smith had appeared in his office out of the blue claiming that Kate was the result of a love affair that he had had with their mother well over fifty years ago, obviously Kate and her attorney husband Reed have to take some action, but what? Meet him? Ignore him? After DNA testing confirms Smith's claim, it opens a veritable Pandora's box of possibilities and questions. Who is Smith really? What does he want? Why has he suddenly chosen to appear in Kate's life? And, most importantly, why does he equally suddenly and mysteriously choose to disappear? Following much confusion worse confounded (and from her POV confounded confusion!)coupled with a hair-breath encounter with a killer, Kate is finally able to make sense out of a convoluted pattern of decades-old crimes and misdemeanors, lay her own ghosts happily to rest and eventually resolve matters in such a way that even the stuffy Fanslers can find at least tolerably acceptable. There is so much pleasure built-in to sharing Kate's world: characters who come insistently to life, precise plotting that moves briskly and intriguingly from event to event, and, above all, a literary style that has delighted me for over thirty years. Amanda Cross paints verbal pictures that linger in my mind, and she reminds me with every paragraph that conversation is indeed an art and not a lost one so long as she, Kate and Reed are around to keep it flowing. "The Edge of Doom" is a warm and witty novel to be savored...I certainly did.

At age fifty-six, Kate Fansler feels very contented with her life. She's very happy in her marriage to Reed, loves her job as a professor teaching literature to graduate students, and has made peace with the fact that she and her three brothers have nothing in common and very rarely see each other. Thus she is surprised when her oldest brother Laurnce calls with an urgent request to meet at his club.When she arrives, he tells her that a man going by the name Jason Smith claims to be her biological father and is willing to take a DNA test to prove it. Kate agrees to this and when the results are in, the tests prove conclusively that he is her sire. Kate wants to get to know her father, not realizing that she is in danger from a killer who needs to avenge a crime committed twenty-five years ago involving Jay even if it means using innocent dupes like her as a tool to insure success.It is always a treat to read a Kate Fansler mystery and THE EDGE OF DOOM is no exception. Readers get to know the heroine in a way they never have before and they will feel closer to her as they are privy to her thought processes. Fans of Shakespeare and literary mysteries will definitely want to read Amanda Cross's latest work, a novel that humanizes her heroineHarriet Klausner