Lust and Literature
Academic politics turn steamy at the State University of Michigan when Delaney Kildare--a buffed, studly graduate student--starts making waves among the faculty. What's his story? What does he want? What will he do to get it?
Amateur sleuth Nick Hoffman, an English professor, finds his career and his happy menage with writer Stefan Borowski suddenly threatened by the turmoil spreading around Kildare. Where does it all lead? Scandal and murder, of course.
"Nick Hoffman mows does intellectual pretenders with scathing wit."
"A witty and devastating backstage view of college life."
"Darkly amusing...This is sneaky, subversive fun."
"Elegantly skewers ivory-tower pretensions, petty politics, incompetencies, and hypocrisies...A delight for confirmed and new fans alike."
"Surprising and deeply felt...Raphael's strongest work yet."
"A stylish mystery with an intimate look at the jungle of academia...Witty, impeccably written."
Amazon.com Review
Studying at the (fictional) State University of Michigan can be murder--at least in Lev Raphael's brittle, bright, and brash books about Nick Hoffman.
Hoffman teaches in the university's EAR (English, American Studies, Rhetoric) department and is very popular with his students. However, he has just turned 40 and is seriously worried about getting tenure. Also, his supervisors tend to view him as an under-published scholar, and, with some justification, a walking crime zone. The truth is that Nick attracts murder like a magnet. This time out, a student named Jesse Benevento--son of a history professor--is stabbed to death before Nick's very eyes during a campus riot. Nick and his novelist lover, Stefan Borowski, are sucked into a case that turns even uglier when a second murder occurs. As Nick struggles to solve the murders, his colleagues whine and bicker, a graduate student stalks him, and more violence erupts on campus.
If you like the way Raphael puts the camp into campus, his two previous titles, The Edith Wharton Murders and Let's Get Criminal , are both available in paperback. --Dick Adler
From Publishers Weekly
If Nick Hoffman ever gets the tenure he craves at the State University of Michigan, the body count could be staggering. Raphael's latest is just the third in this bright series (after 1997's The Edith Wharton Murders), and already the campus is littered with corpses. Hoffman, who has just turned 40, teaches in the university's EAR (English, American Studies, Rhetoric) department and is very popular with his studentsAalthough somewhat less so with his supervisors, who understandably view him as a crime magnet. Nick might not be as cool a crime solver as Kate Fansler, the Harvard prof star of Amanda Cross's brainy mysteries, but he's refreshingly open about his sexual preference (gay), his religion (Jewish) and his lack of reverence for the world of academia. (Talking about a campus crime wave, he says, "Assaults were up, bicycle thefts were up, and more flashers were reported in the library. As a bibliographer, I found that particularly depressing, because it was bound to give students the wrong idea about research.") When a vindictive student named Jesse Benevento is stabbed to death during a mini-riot, Hoffman and his novelist lover, Stefan Borowski, are plunged into a darkly amusing diversion involving French fiction (a novel by Benjamin Constant plays an important role) and professional and personal jealousies. This is sneaky, subversive funAthe perfect read to cut a class for.
ES Index : 3
Has Cover : Yes
All Identifiers : amazon:B005W77GOO, goodreads:537873, isbn:9780312264963
Number of Words in Auth: 2
Formats : EPUB
Number of Formats : 1
Test Text Series Index: Mysteries
Single Author : Lev Raphael
Original Source : New_Files_Horla_11_13
Sorted Author by LN, FN: Raphael, Lev
Title Length : 029
Title Parm D : The Death of a Constant Lover
Title Parm F : The Death of a Constant Lover
Title Parm A : The Death of a Constant Lover
Title Parm B : (
ES Lib Name : NIRC 2019-11
Record ID : 9573
Template Work Area : Mysteries
ES Name : Nick Hoffman Mysteries
Uncomma Author : Lev Raphael
Num of Aut : 1