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This page lists novels and story collections that feature the amateur detective Kate Fansler.

In The Last Analysis

Amanda Cross

1964

A Kate Fansler novel

"When beautiful Janet Harrison asks English professor Kate Fansler to recommend a Manhattan psychoanalyst, Kate immediately sends the girl to her dear friend and former lover, Dr. Emanuel Bauer. Seven weeks later, the girl is stabbed to death on Emanuel's couch--with incriminating fingerprints on the murder weapon. To Kate, the idea of her brilliant friend killing anyone is preposterous, but proving it seems an impossible task. For Janet had no friends, no lover, no family. Why, then, should someone feel compelled to kill her? Kate's analytic techniques leave no stone unturned--not even the one under which a venomous killer once again lies coiled and ready to strike."

The James Joyce Murder

Amanda Cross

1967

A Kate Fansler novel

"Kate Fansler is vacationing in the sweet and harmless Berkshires, sorting through the letters of Henry James. But when her next-door neighbor is murdered, and all her houseguests are prime suspects, her idyll turns prosaic, indeed."

Poetic Justice

Amanda Cross

1970

A Kate Fansler novel

"Kate Fansler, Professor of English, is caught in the throes of a student revolt. She becomes involved in a struggle between two colleges, but events come to a head when an ambitious professor collapses and dies at Kate's engagement party."

The Theban Mysteries

Amanda Cross

1971

A Kate Fansler novel

"Kate Fansler returns to the Theban, an elite Manhattan private school and her alma mater, to teach a seminar on Antigone, only to find herself and her students caught up in a series of unusual and dangerous incidents that threaten the school and everyone connected to it."

The Question of Max

Amanda Cross

1976

A Kate Fansler novel

"When professor and amateur sleuth Kate Fansler accompanies a fussy friend to the rocky coast of Maine to peruse the papers of a famous, recently deceased author, she is horrified to come across one of her students, dead. Which leads her to one very important question, namely, would Max stoop so low as to murder...?"

Death in a Tenured Position

Amanda Cross

1981

A Kate Fansler novel

"When Janet Mandelbaum is made the first woman professor at Harvard's English Department, the men are not happy. They are unhappier still when her tea is spiked and she is found drunk on the floor of the women's room. With a little time, Janet's dear friend and colleague Kate Fansler could track down the culprit, but time is running out."

Sweet Death, Kind Death

Amanda Cross

1984

A Kate Fansler novel

"When Clare College's resident eccentric Patrice Umphelby is found drowned in the campus lake, it's called a suicide. But the college president grows suspicious and calls in noted professor/detective Kate Fansler to research the matter. Ingratiating herself with her academic colleagues to learn more about Patrice's life, Kate digs up the evidence she needs to understand her death."

No Word From Winifred

Amanda Cross

1986

A Kate Fansler novel

"When Winifred, the niece of a renowned British novelist goes missing after she agreed to be interviewed for her esteemed aunt's biography, the biographer taps Kate Fansler to find her. Kate spots clues all right, but finding the person is a lot trickier than she thought."

A Trap for Fools

Amanda Cross

1989

A Kate Fansler novel

"When the body of Canfield Adams, a professor of Middle Eastern culture, is found on the pavement seven stories below his open office window, the police think it was suicide. But those who knew the professor, knew that there were numerous people on campus and off who would have relished pushing him. Kate is asked to investigate, and she herself is not sure she wants to succeed. For the murderer may well be a student she cares about...or a colleague...or even a friend."

The Players Come Again

Amanda Cross

1990

A Kate Fansler novel

"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."

An Imperfect Spy

Amanda Cross

1995

A Kate Fansler novel

"While guest-teaching a semester at Schuyler Law School, Kate Fansler gets to know an extraordinary secretary named Harriet, who patterns her life after John le Carré's character George Smiley. Harriet reveals that Schuyler has some serious skeletons swinging in its perfectly appointed closets, including the fate of Schuyler's only tenured female professor and a faculty wife who has killed her husband. As 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."

The Collected Stories

Amanda Cross

1997

"Amanda Cross is master of the American literary whodunit. In her delicately menacing short fiction, assembled here in one volume, dangerous impulses seize the most unlikely individuals, and everyday existence is fast eclipsed by the bizarre. Among the compelling intrigues: The cold-blooded murder of Mrs. Byron Lloyd, shot dead during a writers' panel discussion . . . the enigma of the nameless toddler who walks out of the bushes one New England summer afternoon . . . the reappearance of a missing Constable drawing just where it can cause the most trouble . . . and other wonderful mysteries, many of which star the incomparable amateur sleuth Kate Fansler."

The Puzzled Heart

Amanda Cross

1998

A Kate Fansler novel

"Kate Fansler's husband, Reed, has been kidnapped, and the ransom demand requires Kate to give up her left-leaning politics and join the Christian Right. Instead, Kate turns to septuagenarian detective Harriet Furst, a woman whose advanced age allows her to "move about the world unseen" as she gathers clues. It doesn't take long for Harriet to find Reed, but discovering who was behind the kidnapping proves more difficult. In the course of exposing the culprit, Cross entertains her audience with the kind of highly literate, witty writing and outspoken politics that have been hallmarks of Kate Fansler mysteries for the past 30 years."

Honest Doubt

Amanda Cross

2000

A Kate Fansler novel

"Professor Charles Haycock is dead from a hearty dose of his own heart medication. The mystery is not why Haycock was murdered-very few could stomach the woman-hating prof - but who did the deed. Estelle "Woody" Woodhaven, a private investigator hired to find the killer, naturally enlists the help of that indefatigable amateur sleuth, Kate Fansler. Together, they start to pull at the loose ends of the very tangled Clifton College English Department. The list of suspects is longer than the freshman survey reading list. And as the women defuse the host of literary landmines set out for them, Woody suspects they're only scratching the surface of a very large and sinister plot."

The Edge of Doom

Amanda Cross

2002

A Kate Fansler novel

"Just when Kate Fansler thinks life couldn’t possibly hold any more surprises, she receives a phone call from Laurence, the eldest of her imperious brothers. But a woman as sharp as Kate knows that the moment one stops believing in life’s little bends in the road is the time when it has more twists in store. Kate has always been different from the other Fanslers–a free and independent thinker in a family where propriety and decorum are prized above all. She has always assumed it was because she was the youngest and the only girl in the family. But over a drink with Laurence, Kate’s whole understanding of herself is thrown into question as he calmly tells her that a strange man came to his office claiming to be Kate’s father–and it’s quite possible that she is not a Fansler after all. There are even more dangerous curves in the road for Kate Fansler, especially after she meets the man who calls himself her father. When more life-threatening secrets and lies emerge, Kate and the Fansler family are suddenly pitched perilously close to the edge of doom."

Triple Cross

Amanda Cross

1970

Collects together the first three Kate Fansler novels: In the last Analysis; The James Joyce Murder; and Poetic Justice.