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. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Amateur sleuth and college professor Nick Hoffman (The Edith Wharton Murders, St. Martin's, 1997) witnesses a sudden campus melee that results in the murder of a department head's son. His desire to investigate may prevent him from making tenure next year, especially if any further scandal attaches to him. And there's always his failure to have published anything recently. Departmental jealousies, campus violence and racism, and Nick's 15-year relationship with Stefan provide ample grist for the author's often witty insight and make his fictional town of "Michiganapolis" a very happening place. Recommended.Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


New York Times Book Review
Raphael's Nick Hoffman "mows down intellectual pretenders with scathing wit."


Washington Post Book World
"Nick's smart-alecky sensibility...gives this novel its deliciously wicked appeal."


From Kirkus Reviews
The worthy staff of the mythical State University of Michigan at Michiganapolis, always glancing back nervously over their shoulders at their colleagues at Ann Arbor, are giving them a run for their money in one important measure: homicide. The kickoff victim this time is Nick Hoffman's former student Jesse Benevento, son of the history department chair, who's stabbed to death during a melee over religious proselytizing on campus. The killing is so muffled that it hardly makes a dent in Nick's anxiety over his upcoming tenure decision and his novelist lover Stefan Borowski's getting dropped by his publisher. In fact, the storys entire first halfin which Nick is pursued by fawning grad student Delaney Kildare as colleagues (from Nick's officemate, menaced one-woman affirmative- action hire Lucille Mochtar, to flamboyant Canadian Studies scholar Juno Dromgoole) coo admiringly over his earnest opinions and his blandly self-congratulatory witseems aimed exclusively at the terminally Nick-smitten. But a second murder begins to weave Nick's constant allusions into a pattern of clues, and the climactic revelation is both surprising and deeply felt. In the end, cutting back on the gossip that dominated Let's Get Criminal (1996) and The Edith Wharton Murders (1997) leaves room for the exploration of character that makes this Raphael's strongest book yet. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

He'd been warned to avoid trouble: Nick Hoffman's outspoken attitude and reputation for being in the wrong place at the wrong time had placed his career in jeopardy. But what trouble could be caused by eating lunch? It was his partner Stefan's idea that Nick eat near the campus bridge over the Michigan River once in a while, something to help him get over the nightmares of the murder two years earlier. Nick's involvement had brought publicity, bad publicity, to EAR (the Department of English, American Studies, and Rhetoric), as well as to the State University of Michigan, and not done very much for his staying on a tenure track. With his review coming up soon, Nick didn't need any distractions...and he certainly didn't need to see the person lying dead on the bridge. Forced to wade ever deeper into the events set in motion by another death on campus, inexorably drawn into another risky investigation in the surprisingly cutthroat world of academia - where murder and faculty meetings are often difficult to tell apart - Nick's job isn't the only thing that may be on the line.

FROM THE CRITICS

Marilyn Stasio

...[T]he idiocies of academe always bring out the caustic humor that is the best part of [Nick Hoffman]. — The New York Times Book Review

Library Journal

Amateur sleuth and college professor Nick Hoffman (The Edith Wharton Murders, St. Martin's, 1997) witnesses a sudden campus melee that results in the murder of a department head's son. His desire to investigate may prevent him from making tenure next year, especially if any further scandal attaches to him. And there's always his failure to have published anything recently. Departmental jealousies, campus violence and racism, and Nick's 15-year relationship with Stefan provide ample grist for the author's often witty insight and make his fictional town of "Michiganapolis" a very happening place. Recommended.

Marilyn Stasio - The New York Times Book Review

...[T]he idiocies of academe always bring out the caustic humor that is the best part of [Nick Hoffman].

Kirkus Reviews

The worthy staff of the mythical State University of Michigan at Michiganapolis, always glancing back nervously over their shoulders at their colleagues at Ann Arbor, are giving them a run for their money in one important measure: homicide. The kickoff victim this time is Nick Hoffman's former student Jesse Benevento, son of the history department chair, who's stabbed to death during a melee over religious proselytizing on campus. The killing is so muffled that it hardly makes a dent in Nick's anxiety over his upcoming tenure decision and his novelist lover Stefan Borowski's getting dropped by his publisher. In fact, the story's entire first half—in which Nick is pursued by fawning grad student Delaney Kildare as colleagues (from Nick's officemate, menaced one-woman affirmative-action hire Lucille Mochtar, to flamboyant Canadian Studies scholar Juno Dromgoole) coo admiringly over his earnest opinions and his blandly self-congratulatory wit—seems aimed exclusively at the terminally Nick-smitten. But a second murder begins to weave Nick's constant allusions into a pattern of clues, and the climactic revelation is both surprising and deeply felt. In the end, cutting back on the gossip that dominated Let's Get Criminal (1996) and The Edith Wharton Murders (1997) leaves room for the exploration of character that makes this Raphael's strongest book yet.