Kate Fansler is at a bit of a loose end having just published her more recent academic work, so when a publisher invites her to lunch in order to pitch a new investigative job to her, she is intrigued. Particularly so once she learns that the publisher wants her to delve into the life of the wife of a Great Author of the modernist period, a man who achieved high acclaim by centering a novel on the interior life of a woman, who most people suppose was modeled on the wife. As she begins to contemplate the work, Kate is eager to meet and talk with three women whose lives were all intertwined with the Foxx family, but they all have secrets of their own to keep…. I’ve been reading the Kate Fansler mysteries a bit at a time, sometimes feeling exasperated with the character and sometimes cheering her on. This, the 10th (of, I think, 14 in total) in the series is actually far and away my favourite so far, largely because Kate meets her match in the three women she encounters and so her tendency toward archness is sharply curbed. I also liked the second part of the novel, which is in the form of a memoir of one of the three women and which is completely different from the usual tone in these books. I don’t know that it’s necessary to have read the earlier books in the series, but certainly a basic knowledge of the myth of Ariadne and Theseus is helpful; very highly recommended! ( )

disappointing, not a tradiotional mystery;
dispose of the book

wife of a modern author turns out to have written a 'reply'

Kate researches Emmanuel + Gabrielle Foxx — life + novel — many secrets

When Kate Fansler is offered the exciting prospect of writing a biography of Gabrielle Foxx, the obscure and enigmatic wife of a great modernist author, she accepts. But what she discovers when she meets three charming women connected with the Foxx family since childhood is a veil of secrecy that hides a fantastic pattern of events, a shocking secret that fifty years have done nothing to defuse, and a strange truth that she can never reveal....

I love Amanda Cross. I love her intelligence and wit. With no other writer do I make as many notes of sentences I save just for the enjoyment of reading them again. Having said that, while there are many things about this book that I appreciated, I didn't enjoy it as much as others. To start with the positive, I agree with another reviewer who said "It brings together themes of feminism, literature, relationships and aging with a mystery format." And that I appreciated. I appreciated reading about the journeys of all of these women. Now - the challenges. To me this book felt choppy. I couldn't understand why I had difficulty keeping the people straight - especially since there weren't that many people. I think my reaction comes from the nature of the evolution of the characters, multiple things that turned out to be different than the initially appeared, and the use of a section devoted to a memoir written by one of the characters - hence part of the book came from a totally different viewpoint. I think part of my response came from needing to keep changing who exactly was at the center of this story. To give a concrete example, I drew a genogram based on what I thought I was reading. Partway through the book I redrew the genogram with a different person on the center of the page. Finally, as can often happen when writers don't want to show their hand, we could have learned more about a key players in the story. Oh - it is almost an afterthought to say that this was definitely not a classic mystery. This was a book that was primarily telling about Kate's conversations with several women and what she learned from these conversations. ( )