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New York Times

In These Novels, Murder's the Thing

History Lessons Daphne Ouverture, the main character in HISTORY LESSONS (Soho Crime, 373 pp., $25.95), has chosen a life of the mind, and believes she likes it that way. As a junior professor specializing in French colonialism at the Ivy-esque Harrison University, she prefers 'spending her time with the dead over the living. At least the dead never sassed her back or asked why she was single.' But could the dead, as Daphne wonders, teach her how to live? She's about to find out when someone murders a colleague, a creepy anthropology professor named Sam Taylor. Daphne doesn't really want to play amateur sleuth, but she can't shake the mysterious text Sam sent her the night he died — and then someone attacks her on her own doorstep. I've longed for an academia mystery that hearkens back to classic authors like Helen Eustis and Amanda Cross, and Wallbrook, who knows this world well, delivers. 'History Lessons' brilliantly mixes pointed satire, fabulous characters (especially Daphne's two besties) and a thoughtful meditation on whose fortunes get to rise, and whose are ground down on the altar of power. The House at Devil's Neck Over four books, Mead has perfected his take on the locked-room mystery, one that owes a debt to John Dickson Carr. THE HOUSE AT DEVIL'S NECK (Mysterious Press, 288 pp., $26.95) reminds readers of a date — Aug. 31, 1939, the day before Germany invaded Poland — adding historical weight to what is already a dizzyingly plotted affair. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.