BLUNT INSTRUMENT

There’s no shortage of suspects when an unpopular professor is murdered.

This winning first mystery from novelist and memoirist Bloom features an English professor turned private eye with the perfectly hard-boiled name of Dell Chandler and a charming, ironic, super cool narrative voice to match. She’s hired to investigate an untimely death at Cromwell University, a private college in a snooty area of Connecticut: A professor named Oliver Bullfinch was bludgeoned to death in his office with a bust of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Low expectations of the local police lead college president Elizabeth Cutty to hire Dell, who can very much use the $500 daily fee. She brings to the task a solid background in lock-picking, file-snatching, and basic snooping, much of it gleaned from old episodes of Law & Order. Fortunately, she also knows something about the tenure-mad, prestige-hungry, and often alcoholic nature of the standard-issue academic, as well as their endless backbiting. And she’s no wimp. “I’m built fairly big and very solid. I look best in smooth, tailored clothes or in jeans. I look my very best stark naked. In ruffles and florals, I look like a pale side of beef with ribbons around it.” As for the naked part, we’ll learn more about this once Dell starts lusting after Sgt. Nat Baker, a strong, silent type on the local force. When someone cuts her brake lines, when someone throws a rock through her godfather’s window (he’s a local, and was a pal of Bullfinch’s), Dell can tell she’s getting close. Lots of action, late-breaking twists and characters, plus the emergence of a buried secret in Dell’s own past make the last quarter of the book a bit of a whirlwind, with a second highly educated corpse dropping into the mix, but Dell Chandler is a cool character and a quick study, and her sense of humor never deserts her.

This entertaining, sexy adventure in not-so-dark academia checks all the classic detective-story boxes. Keep ‘em coming.