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Veronica Chase, Assistant Professor of Economics, and the only black woman in the department at Harvard University, stumbles over the body of Rosezella Maynette Fisher late one night after a committee meeting. Ella had also been a member of the committee. She had worked her way up from poverty and stagnation in Mississippi to her current position, by learning how to play within the system, working the wealthy alumni for donations, etc, until, finally, being appointed dean by the new president. But, on the first day of the fall term, she apparently trips and falls down the stairs during a blackout, hits her head and dies. Nikki doesn't think it was an accident. She starts snooping around and finds that although Ella had been well liked, after she was appointed Dean she started making enemies and there were many people in the Harvard community who had words with her. Nikki must proceed carefully because she is young and black and on a tenure track. After having spent two years on Wall Street, she returned to Harvard, hoping that there would be less pressure, but her Department Chairman has other plans. He keeps appointing her to committees and piling much of his work onto her shoulders, and she cannot refuse. With a little help from her friends she continues to search for Ella's murderer, and finally discovers the real reason for her death. There are many well-drawn characters in this first novel of a projected Ivy League series, and the setting is authentic. The author is a black woman over-achiever, a who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard-Radcliffe, and attended from the Harvard Business School AND, the Harvard Law School, who at the time of the writing of the book was a partner in a large management consulting firm and on the boards of directors of several non-profit organizations and is now a television executive. . As far as I can determine, there was only one other book in the series, BLUE BLOOD.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, December 2001
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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