An Imperfect Spy

In her long-awaited new novel, Amanda Cross continues to purvey pleasure to fans of her heroine, Kate Fansler. Kate is known for many things within the ivy-covered walls of her esteemed university, but inside or out, the brilliant feminist professor is as renowned for her talent at crime solving as she is for her literary enthusiasms. When Kate Fansler and her husband, Reed, decide to teach a semester at Schuyler Law School, they meet an extraordinary secretary who calls herself Harriet and patterns her life after John le Carre's character George Smiley. Harriet reveals to Kate that this very proper institution of legal learning has some serious skeletons swinging in its perfectly appointed closets. Kate wanted this semester to be a quiet one, but she can't resist getting involved, especially when Harriet tantalizes her with some disturbing information about Schuyler's only tenured female professor. Then there's the faculty wife who has killed her husband. And if Kate doesn't have enough to tackle, she is also up against the men who comprise the faculty of Schuyler itself - a thoroughly unapologetic bastion of white male power, mediocrity, and misogyny. Although she has only a few months on campus, Kate refuses to let Schuyler's rigid ideals and insistence on secrecy suppress her indefatigable curiosity - or her obsession with the truth...