COUP DE GRACE
by J.S. Borthwick
Coup De Grace ($24.95; Feb.; 352 pp.; 0-312-25313-3) Junior-league academic passions seethe at Miss Merritt’s Boarding School. But which passionate academic would batter Anita Goshawk (art history) to death—unless, of course, she was mistaken for the infinitely more murderable Grace Carpentier, who thinks the French department is her own personal Sixth Republic? Sarah Deane (English), filling in on a temporary appointment, launches an investigation just as cozy in its conventions as veteran Borthwick’s shipboard pastiche My Body Lies Over the Ocean (p. 25).