Evil Stalks the Halls of Academe!
Welcome to the hothouse world of academia where egos bruise as easily as peaches and vendettas grow like weeds. Cheerful, sarcastic professor Nick Hoffman never wanted to be a sleuth, but circumstances at the outwardly bucolic State University of Michigan keep forcing him to solve crimes and save himself from prison--or worse.
Now, at Christmas time, he's caught between rival factions in his department over who should be the next chairperson and even over what kind of Christmas tree the office should have. His life spirals out of control thanks to an unexpected sexual attraction, and a blur of anonymous threats, stalking, and assault. Is murder next?
โLev Raphael is one of the most sophisticated mystery authors alive, and his latest, Burning Down the House, is witty and charming.โ
โThe Cleveland Plain Dealer
โThis series has always been distinguished for its irreverent academic wit and hip social observations.โ
โThe Washington Post Book World
โLev Raphaelโs Nick Hoffman books [are] wickedly funny.โ
โThe Seattle Times
โRaphael continues his assault on the pretensions of academic careerists in his newest tale featuring scholar Nick Hoffman, caught in a maelstrom of campus strifeโฆ.The most entertaining scenes center on faculty meetings during which I repeatedly laughed aloud. These educators with exalted egos get their knickers in a twist over such earth-shattering issues as whether to install a White Studies program to help foster diversity at the school, or whether setting up a small, non-denominational fir tree in the office during the Yule season somehow represents a violation of church-state separation. Readers unaware of scholarly eccentricities may find the humor exaggerated. I find it utterly realistic.โ
โChicago Sun-Times
โ[Lev Raphael] is defining a new genre.โ
โBooklist
โFilled with clever humor as well as sophisticated comments about food, wine, current events and contemporary fiction. [Raphaelโs] satirical observations make this a light-hearted illustration of mystery writing that is entertaining and amusing.โ
โNational Jewish Post & Opinion
โIf conditions on university campuses really are as bizarre and insidiously political as depicted in novelist-critic Lev Raphaelโs new Burning Down the House, higher education must be at an all-time low. As the author amusingly presents it, the faculty at State University of Michigan is an assortment of eccentric, conniving, self-promoting, not to mention homicidal, half-baked do-nothings.โ
โLos Angeles Times **
From Publishers Weekly
In Raphael's disappointing fourth book featuring untenured professor and amateur detective Nick Hoffman, Juno Dromgoole, an English professor at the State University of Michigan, wants to find out who's been harassing her with anonymous phone calls urging her to "Get out!" and to become chair (the "alpha bitch") of her department. So she turns to her colleague Nick for help. The Glock-owning Juno hardly seems to need Nick or anyone else; she's got more balls than 99% of her colleagues, whom she dismisses as "a bunch of whiners and weasels." This dysfunctional tribe of academics represents the possible suspects, and while several are clearly capable of a threatening phone call, none seems to have the guts or the motive for the (mildly) escalating violence. Raphael pads the story with other conflicts: Will Nick get tenure? Should he buy a gun of his own? Is he attracted to the Amazonian Juno? (Not a trivial question for a gay man in a committed relationship.) It would take a more resourceful, less ambivalent hero to rescue Juno or this thinly plotted novel. Nick is almost as annoying as his petty, inarticulate colleagues. Their heated debates are more reminiscent of playground squabbles than intellectual disputes. Satirizing the academic world is one of the author's big themes, but it's a tired premise in this inexplicably titled book. Raphael doesn't generate enough narrative momentum or suspense to hold the reader's interest as the novel grinds to its abrupt, unsatisfying ending. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Raphael proceeds down a path he started in the last Nick Hoffman mystery, Little Miss Evil (2000). That book was almost over before someone was murdered. This time the corpse never shows up, and Nick voices Raphael's seeming preference for slowly- building suspense rather than bodies. Suspense arises from a variety of sources, and readers may find partnered, gay Nick's mid-life lusting for a woman more engrossing than the mysterious accumulation of injuries done to him and the object of his sexual fantasies--tall, voluptuous Juno. Will Nick act on his fantasies? For that matter, will untenured Nick even stay on at the State University of Michigan, Raphael's take on academic hell, where professors are reduced to whining subservience by administrators who, like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland , hand down sentences before verdicts? Sexual and academic tensions fascinate Raphael more than the phone threats and beatings of the mystery element of the book, leaving readers to wonder whether he is defining a new genre. Whitney Scott
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