This is another Kate Fansler mystery that charts the changing nature of American academia. Poor Professor Fansler has had to suffer Vietnam protests, seventies revolts against the curriculum, racial activism and now, mostly darkly, sinister right wing activists. Much of the sub text of the popular Fansler stories has been that of reactionary backlashes against feminism and related egalitarian struggles. It has been a pleasure, and to be honest, an artistic weakness of the series, that murder comes inevitably linked with a patriarchal agenda. In The Puzzled Heart the black forces of the extreme right have decided to eliminate Kate, the feminist, once and for all by kidnapping her husband Reed and threatening dire consequences unless she publishes a retraction of all her most deeply held beliefs.
Fortunately for plausibility, Kate and her typically over articulate pals have
to admit that mainstream political groups would never risk abduction. Indeed,
even the lunatic fringe proves at last to have been manipulated by a far more
personal enemy of Kate. However, The Puzzled Heart is far from Cross’s retraction
of her progressive project for the crime novel. Guilt and obsession lie in the
way personal relations are warped by the acceptance of traditional social conventions,
not by violating them. Many critics argue that detective fiction is inherently
conservative. The form tends towards the resumption of a traditional, and unjust,
social order. Amanda Cross and Kate Fansler are determined to prove them wrong.
I salute them both.
-------
Susan Rowland
There are thirteen books in this series. The first, In the Last Analysis
was published in 1964.