The Edith Wharton Murders

by Lev Raphael, Gregory Ashe (Foreword by)

Overview

A Nick Hoffman / Academic Mystery, Book 2 - Nick Hoffman, desperate to get tenure, has been saddled with a thankless task: coordinating a conference on Edith Wharton that will demonstrate how his department and his university supports women's issues. There's been widespread criticism that SUM is really the State University of Men. Problem is, he's forced to invite two warring Wharton societies, and the conflict between rival scholars escalates from mudslinging to murder. Nick's job and whole career are on the line unless he can help solve the case and salvage the conference.

Originally published in 1998, this new edition contains a 2020 foreword by Gregory Ashe as well as a new introduction by the author.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951092221
Publisher:	Requeered Tales
Publication date:	06/09/2020
Series:	A Nick Hoffman / Academic Mystery , #2
Pages:	282
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Lev Raphael is the author of 26 books in a dozen genres from memoir to mystery. His first book of short stories "Dancing on Tisha B'Av" won a Lambda Literary Award. He's published hundreds of stories, essays, articles, and book reviews in a wide range of newspapers, magazines and journals. Lev has won Amelia's Reed Smith Fiction Prize and International Quarterly's Crossing Boundaries Prize for Innovative Prose, awarded by novelist D.M. Thomas, author of "The White Hotel". His suspense novel "Assault with a Deadly Lie" was a Midwest Book Award finalist. Lev's fiction and essays have appeared in over 24 anthologies in the U.S. and England, and are taught at colleges and universities around the country. His fiction has been analyzed in scholarly journals, books, and conferences like MLA. Special Archives at Michigan State University's Library purchased his literary papers and updates them yearly. Lev has reviewed for the Detroit Free Press, the Washington Post and other papers.

Gregory Ashe is a longtime Midwesterner. He has lived in Chicago, Bloomington (IN), and Saint Louis, his current home. He is the author of the Hazard and Somerset Mysteries, the Borealis Investigations, and Hazard and Somerset: A Union of Swords. When not reading and writing, he is an educator.

Editorial Reviews

"Is vulgar literary taste sufficient motive for murder? Actually, killing is too kind for the vindictive scholars in Lev Raphael's maliciously funny campus mystery The Edith Wharton Murders."

- Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

"Among the pleasures of this mystery is its detailing of the day-to-day domesticity between Nick and Stefan-and of that essential mystery that lies at the core of even our closest relationships."

- Katherine V. Forrest, author of Flashpoint

"A savagely funny satire of academic pretensions and posturings. Definitely on my list of the year's best!"

- Dean James, co-author of By a Woman's Hand

From the Publisher

Is vulgar literary taste sufficient motive for murder? Actually, killing is too kind for the vindictive scholars in Lev Raphael's maliciously funny campus mystery The Edith Wharton Murders, which makes clever use of a conference on Wharton ("a popular but bland and uncontentious woman writer") to satirize the intellectual jealousies and political rivalries that poison the air in academic communities. "These Wharton folks are just like gang-bangers, only they dress marginally better and they don't have drive-by shootings," according to Nick Hoffman, a Wharton bibliographer who has the unenviable job of moderating the hostilities at the State University of Michigan. After the initial skirmishes between opposing literary camps who invoke the battle spirit of Conan the Barbarian ("To crush your enemies, drive them before you, and hear the lamentation of their women"), the mayhem begins in earnest with the arrival of two celebrated and ardently loathed authors- one of whom winds up dead. For an amateur, Nick does a credible job of sorting out the victim's enemies while reserving his sympathy for those who merely despised the woman because her books had "no real style, no sense of irony, no vision." And for "an escaped academic," as the publisher describes him, Raphael has marvelous recall of the entertaining world he left behind. -New York Times Book Review

Marilyn Stasio

Is vulgar literary taste sufficient motive for murder? Actually, killing is too kind for the vindictive scholars in Lev Raphael's maliciously funny campus mystery The Edith Wharton Murders, which makes clever use of a conference on Wharton ("a popular but bland and uncontentious woman writer") to satirize the intellectual jealousies and political rivalries that poison the air in academic communities.

"These Wharton folks are just like gang-bangers, only they dress marginally better and they don't have drive-by shootings," according to Nick Hoffman, a Wharton bibliographer who has the unenviable job of moderating the hostilities at the State University of Michigan. After the initial skirmishes between opposing literary camps who invoke the battle spirit of Conan the Barbarian ("To crush your enemies, drive them before you, and hear the lamentation of their women"), the mayhem begins in earnest with the arrival of two celebrated and ardently loathed authors- one of whom winds up dead.

For an amateur, Nick does a credible job of sorting out the victim's enemies while reserving his sympathy for those who merely despised the woman because her books had "no real stylem no sense of irony, no vision." And for "an escaped academic," as the publisher describes him, Raphael has marvelous recall of the entertaining world he left behind.

New York Times Book Review

As if the State University of Michigan weren't already full enough of misfits and malcontents, a conference on Edith Wharton promises to pipe more in from across the country. Reluctant conference organizer Nick Hoffman is sure that the invited guests—rival Wharton scholars Van Deegan Jones (of the offensively insular old guard) and Verity Gallup (of the offensively irresponsible new), trendy punk novelist Chloe DeVore and her current lover Vivianne Fresnel, bestselling trashy romancer/aspiring Wharton biographer Grace-Dawn Vaughan and her professor-baiting editor Devon Davenport—will mix so well with the home-grown cargo of covetous academics, spineless administrators, and born-again trustees that they'll all be delighted when the conference is history. But even Nick is surprised when Chloe DeVore is bashed to death with one of the attractive new granite tiles being installed at the conference site, and a throng of new suspects (a lesbian colleague hoping to break up Chloe's on-again affair with Vivianne! a novelist prostrated by Chloe's dismissive review! a fortuitous ex-husband!) come leaping into the spotlight with all the spontaneity and emotional expressiveness of the Rockettes.

As in Nick's debut (Let's Get Criminal, 1996), criminal investigation takes a backseat to catty gossip as the narrator outdoes the characters by trashing authors as diverse as David Baldacci and Eve K. Sedgwick. Except for the murders, the conference turns out pretty well.

Kirkus Reviews