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MALTESE MANUSCRIPT, THE
by Joanne Dobson
Poisoned Pen Press, February 2003
$24.95
ISBN: 1590580397


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

"The door to my office opened, and a dame walked in, bringing Trouble with her." is the opening sentence of THE MALTESE MANUSCRIPT. I was a bit doubtful that I would be able to finish the book. Boy, was I wrong.

The woman who walked into Professor Karen Pelletier's office that January afternoon was leather clad Sunnye Hardcastle (and her rottweiler, Trouble) Hardcastle, creator of the Kit Danger, P.I. series was passing through town and stopped in to ask Pelletier some questions about the upcoming Women's Studies conference, and to ask for her help in researching a stand alone novel about 19th century New York slum life, since Karen's talk at the conference would be on that topic. Hardcastle takes over Pelletier's seminar that afternoon, and that night, Karen is knocked over by a book thief in the college parking lot.

Among the college library's treasures is a complete set of Raymond Chandler first editions, a Gutenberg bible, a Shakespeare first folio, and the only known (annotated) manuscript of THE MALTESE FALCON. Karen's non-bookish cop boyfriend, Charlie Piotrowski, can't believe that books could be worth lots of money. And then, in March, during the conference, a man is found dead in the closed stacks.

Superficially, the book is a send-up of the cliches of the hard boiled detective novel (Pelletier reads a bit from one of Hardcastle's books passim during the course of this book) and of the gibberish used by academics. When asked if she writes "about murder in order to protest the male-dominated power structures of modern life" she tells the head of the department that she writes about murder to tell a story and to make money. A cozy author at the table agrees with her but the third writer, an academic, says "The narrative momentum of the mystery genre with its focus on moral violation, secrecy, disclosure, and ultimate justice provides a compelling readerly experience that demands repetitive satisfaction"" and the president of the college says "In other words...you write to tell a good story and make some money" Actually, we get to meet some real people and being to care about them.

Dobson teaches English at Fordham University. This is the fifth book in the series. I'm going to look for the first four and hope that Poisoned Pen Press sees fit to continue publishing it.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, December 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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