Karen Pelletier abandoned her life in New York for a professorship at Massachusetts's elite Enfield College. But she quickly learns that New England is not the peaceful enclave she had imagined--and that not even the privileged world of academia is immune to murder....

Professor Karen Pelletier's prime literary passion is poet Emily Dickinson--a passion she shares with her hotshot colleague Randy Astin-Berger. Heir apparent to the head of Enfield's English department, the pompous Randy is the campus Casanova. That is, he was--until he was found strangled with his own flashy necktie.

The last person to see Randy alive--and the first to find him dead--Karen knows she must solve the case before she becomes the prime suspect. But to do that, she must first discover the truth behind Randy's final Dickinsonian discovery--a literary bombshell that may well have been to die for....

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"A truly stunning academic mystery."
--Mystery Lovers Bookshop News

"A fine debut...a pleasure to read."
--The Boston Globe

"A white-knuckle ride through the hallowed halls of higher learning with a delightfully funny heroine who gives as good as she gets."
--Rendezvous

"A superior academic mystery that reminds me of early Amanda Cross."
--Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

"Deftly balancing its literary and mystery elements, Dobson's debut sparkles with wit and insight."
--Publishers Weekly

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Joanne Dobson is Associate Professor of English at Fordham University.  She is a former editor of Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers and the author of Dickinson and the Strategies of Reticence: The Woman Writer in Nineteenth-Century America.  She lives in the New York City area.


From the Hardcover edition.

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