Detective Fiction, Women Detectives - Fiction

A Darker Shade of Crimson

Name: A Darker Shade of Crimson
Author: Pamela Thomas-Graham
ISBN: 9780671016708

by Pamela Thomas-Graham

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Overview

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.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's 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.