In her debut outing as a mystery novelist, Pamela Thomas-Graham introduces the world to a delightful and exciting amateur female detective, Nikki Chase. At 30, Nikki has already eschewed a career on Wall Street to become a professor of economics at Harvard, her alma mater. She is brilliant, beautiful, ambitious, and black--a characteristic Thomas-Graham makes clear from the get-go. "Being young and black at Harvard requires advanced survival skills," she writes. "Seven generations of us have found it exhilarating, perplexing, difficult, and dangerous. For Rosezella Maynette Fisher, it was murder."

When Rosezella, Harvard's most powerful black woman and Nikki's good friend, dies mysteriously on the eve of a new school year, Nikki finds herself compelled to track down all the clues leading to the killer. A cast of richly drawn and complex characters helps and hinders her quest. For advice, she turns occasionally to Raphael Griffin, a cop who has traded the bougainvillea of the British Virgin Islands for the ivy of Harvard Yard. For moral support, she turns to Maggie Daily, a teacher, landlady, and poet whose rich stories and rolling tones provide the book with texture, history, and charm. Like any other good woman detective, Nikki has a love life as perplexing as the mystery to be solved. Her long-lost ex-boyfriend, Dante Rosario, returns to town, bringing with him more sizzle and spark than Nikki is prepared to handle.

Though it's not as dark and creepy as Paullina Simons's 1996 campus-based mysteryThe Red Leaves, A Darker Shade of Crimson captures all the power, tradition, and atmosphere of the Ivy League campus. And while Thomas-Graham does explore the social and political issues surrounding race at Harvard, she manages to avoid the pitfalls of turning a well-crafted mystery into a polemic. --L.A. Smith


From Publishers Weekly
First-novelist Thomas-Graham partly delivers on the promise of this first tale in the projected Ivy League Mystery series by putting her own spin on the academic mystery. Dead is Rosezella Fisher, a smart, politically astute African American woman who had earned some enemies in her diligent climb to the position of dean of students at Harvard Law School. After Ella falls down a flight of steps to her death, Nikki Chase, a younger, black assistant professor in Harvard's economics department and narrator of the story, suspects murder. Thomas-Graham skillfully incorporates attitudes toward race and integration into the story, contrasting older African Americans formed by the civil rights movement to younger middle-class blacks who take for granted the movement's achievements. Less successful are the story's plot and characterizations. Events proceed from a MacGuffin that has a stranglehold on the story: Nikki worked with Ella on a committee examining university finances and must locate two of the dead woman's computer disks. Thomas-Graham manipulates mainly wooden characters who personify the academic power structure, and many of the personal relationships are childish, especially Nikki's sophomoric behavior with ex-lover Dante Rosario. In the end, despite the intellectual setting, the murder turns out not to have been a crime of reason. (Apr.) FYI: Thomas-Graham is the first black woman partner at a large management consultant firm in New York City.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The first black woman partner at McKinsey & Co., the world's largest management firm, launches an Ivy League mystery series.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Thomas-Graham's first Ivy League mystery features Nikki Chase, a young African-American assistant professor of economics at Harvard. Drawn into the investigation of the murder of Assistant Dean Ella Fisher, Nikki finds lots of suspects-and puts herself in great danger. Hazelle Goodman's talent for dialects is apparent in her portrayals of the novel's multicultural cast. In particular, her renditions of a Jamaican detective and a vapid, snobbish Harvard secretary are a treat. Nikki's determination and heart will leave the listener looking forward to her upcoming adventures. M.A.M. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Thomas-Graham, the first black woman partner at a New York consulting firm, launches a series starring Nikki Chase, a black economics professor at Harvard. When the university's dean of students, an opinionated black woman, dies in a suspicious accident, Chase is drawn to investigate. Suspects abound, from the charismatic Harvard president to the victim's radical husband. Meanwhile, Chase encounters her ex-lover, a fellow professor recently returned to Harvard. This is a series with abundant commercial potential: the academic setting offers not only Ivy League ambience but also an opportunity to explore the topical issue of multiculturalism on campus. Further, Nikki is an attractive and smart yet vulnerable heroine whose personal and professional life offers appeal both to fans of female sleuths and to the Terry McMillan crowd. There are also flaws: the dialogue goes limp more often than it crackles, and the secondary characters are mostly types--the earth-mother landlady (think Della Reese), the too-slick boyfriend. Still, a savvy sleuth and a richly detailed setting carry the day. Bill Ott


From Kirkus Reviews
An impressive first outing introduces Nikki Chase, a young black economics professor at Harvard and a feisty addition to the roster of female amateur sleuths. Nikki has discovered the body of Ella Fisher, the outspoken black dean of students, on a staircase in the Littauer buildingthis after a meeting of the prestigious Crimson Future Committee, to which both women had been appointed. The police are calling it murder, and Nikki's snooping indeed soon evokes a barrage of suspicions: Was Ella having an affair with the college's newly appointed President Leo Barrett? Where did that leave Barrett's blue-blooded wife Victoria? What is going on between Nikki's mentor Ian McAllister, of the Management Board, and Comptroller Christian Chung, as the Committee struggles to project the school's financial needs accurately? Why was Nikki attacked in the stacks of the Widener Libraryher backpack snatched? Who had poisoned her escort Justin Simms at the Fogg Museum Gala, and why? All this, and much more, as Nikki tries to resolve her rocky romance with charismatic Dante Rosario. Answers come slowly, and there are crucial secrets to uncover, before a high-noon standoff brings a surprising denouement. Despite an oversized, albeit intriguing, cast of players and a needlessly complex network of confrontations and subplots, Thomas-Graham's precisely rendered campus background, vivid characters, easy dialogue, and fluidly entertaining narrative mark a robustly talented new recruit to the genre. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
Washington Times Let us have roll of drums, please, for A Darker Shade of Crimson. Thomas-Graham could do for higher education what John Grisham has done for the practice of law.


Book Description
Being young, gifted, and black at Harvard has never been easy. For Ella Fisher, outspoken and controversial Dean of Students at Harvard Law School, it was murder. After Nikki Chase -- a smart, ambitious, attractive black economics professor -- stumbles over her friend Ella's body during a blackout in a classroom building, she finds herself plunged into the investigation of her death. In the process she uncovers some of Harvard's most deeply buried secrets. Nikki learns that plenty of people could have wanted Ella dead. There's the debonair -- and married -- new Harvard president Leo Barrett. Many thought Leo and Ella were lovers, and now he's looking awfully guilty. The Chairman of the Economics Department suddenly, suspiciously, has a lot of money. And Ella's radical, Afrocentric ex-husband had apparently been blackmailing her. With the help of Ella's two true friends, Nikki sets out to unravel the mystery -- and the complications of her own love life. Proving that love can be murder, she drives toward the shocking conclusion that will turn all of Harvard on its ear.


About the Author
Pamela Thomas-Graham is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard-Radcliffe College, where she received a degree in economics magna cum laude and was awarded the Captain Jonathan Fay prize -- the highest annual honor bestowed by Radcliffe -- as the student "showing the greatest promise" in her graduating class. A graduate of Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, Thomas-Graham was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. At age thirty-two, she became one of the most influential women in American business when she was named the first black woman partner at McKinsey & Company, the world's largest management consulting firm. A leader of the firm's Media and Entertainment Practice, she advises Fortune 500 companies on a wide variety of strategic issues. A Darker Shade of Crimson is Thomas-Graham's first novel. Her second Ivy League Mystery, Blue Blood, is set at Yale and will be published by Simon & Schuster in April 1999. Originally from Detroit, she divides her time between Manhattan and Westchester County with her husband, writer and attorney Lawrence Otis Graham, and their son.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Being young, gifted, and black at Harvard has always been difficult. For Rosezella Maynette Fisher, outspoken sister girl and controversial Dean of Students at Harvard Law School, it was murder. And the debonair new President of Harvard is a prime suspect. A Darker Shade of Crimson is a novel about how Ella Fisher ended up dead on the first day of the fall semester, and how her friend Veronica (Nikki) Chase - a smart, ambitious, attractive, and well-connected black economics professor - sets out to solve the crime, and in the process uncovers some of Harvard's most deeply buried secrets. At twenty-eight, Nikki is a rising star, the only black professor in Harvard's economics department. After stumbling over Ella Fisher's body during a blackout in a classroom building, she is quickly plunged into the investigation of her death. With the occasional tip from Raphael Griffin, a Harvard policeman, Nikki learns that plenty of people could have wanted Ella dead. Only two people seem to mourn Ella's passing: her blue-blooded, Wellesley-educated secretary, Lindsey Wentworth; and Ella's best girlfriend, Alix Coulter, an actress from Texas with attitude. With their help, Nikki sets out to unravel simultaneously the mystery of Ella's death and the complications of her own love life. Dante Rosario, her long-lost ex-boyfriend, turns up and sets off a chemical reaction; meanwhile, Justin Simms, a Harvard Law School student who flirts like a master, won't take no for an answer. It takes the combined wisdom of Nikki's landlady, Magnolia Dailey, and her best friend, Jessica Leiberman, to help her understand her own heart as she drives toward the shocking conclusion that will turn all of Harvard on its ear.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

First-novelist Thomas-Graham partly delivers on the promise of this first tale in the projected Ivy League Mystery series by putting her own spin on the academic mystery. Dead is Rosezella Fisher, a smart, politically astute African American woman who had earned some enemies in her diligent climb to the position of dean of students at Harvard Law School. After Ella falls down a flight of steps to her death, Nikki Chase, a younger, black assistant professor in Harvard's economics department and narrator of the story, suspects murder. Thomas-Graham skillfully incorporates attitudes toward race and integration into the story, contrasting older African Americans formed by the civil rights movement to younger middle-class blacks who take for granted the movement's achievements. Less successful are the story's plot and characterizations. Events proceed from a MacGuffin that has a stranglehold on the story: Nikki worked with Ella on a committee examining university finances and must locate two of the dead woman's computer disks. Thomas-Graham manipulates mainly wooden characters who personify the academic power structure, and many of the personal relationships are childish, especially Nikki's sophomoric behavior with ex-lover Dante Rosario. In the end, despite the intellectual setting, the murder turns out not to have been a crime of reason. (Apr.) FYI: Thomas-Graham is the first black woman partner at a large management consultant firm in New York City.

Library Journal

The first black woman partner at McKinsey & Co., the world's largest management firm, launches an Ivy League mystery series.

Kirkus Reviews

An impressive first outing introduces Nikki Chase, a young black economics professor at Harvard and a feisty addition to the roster of female amateur sleuths. Nikki has discovered the body of Ella Fisher, the outspoken black dean of students, on a staircase in the Littauer buildingþthis after a meeting of the prestigious Crimson Future Committee, to which both women had been appointed. The police are calling it murder, and Nikki's snooping indeed soon evokes a barrage of suspicions: Was Ella having an affair with the college's newly appointed President Leo Barrett? Where did that leave Barrett's blue-blooded wife Victoria? What is going on between Nikki's mentor Ian McAllister, of the Management Board, and Comptroller Christian Chung, as the Committee struggles to project the school's financial needs accurately? Why was Nikki attacked in the stacks of the Widener Libraryþher backpack snatched? Who had poisoned her escort Justin Simms at the Fogg Museum Gala, and why? All this, and much more, as Nikki tries to resolve her rocky romance with charismatic Dante Rosario. Answers come slowly, and there are crucial secrets to uncover, before a high-noon standoff brings a surprising denouement. Despite an oversized, albeit intriguing, cast of players and a needlessly complex network of confrontations and subplots, Thomas-Graham's precisely rendered campus background, vivid characters, easy dialogue, and fluidly entertaining narrative mark a robustly talented new recruit to the genre.