THE DEATH OF A CONSTANT LOVER

The worthy staff of the mythical State University of Michigan at Michiganapolis, always glancing back nervously over their shoulders at their colleagues at Ann Arbor, are giving them a run for their money in one important measure: homicide. The kickoff victim this time is Nick Hoffman’s former student Jesse Benevento, son of the history department chair, who’s stabbed to death during a melee over religious proselytizing on campus. The killing is so muffled that it hardly makes a dent in Nick’s anxiety over his upcoming tenure decision and his novelist lover Stefan Borowski’s getting dropped by his publisher. In fact, the story’s entire first half—in which Nick is pursued by fawning grad student Delaney Kildare as colleagues (from Nick’s officemate, menaced one-woman affirmative- action hire Lucille Mochtar, to flamboyant Canadian Studies scholar Juno Dromgoole) coo admiringly over his earnest opinions and his blandly self-congratulatory wit’seems aimed exclusively at the terminally Nick-smitten. But a second murder begins to weave Nick’s constant allusions into a pattern of clues, and the climactic revelation is both surprising and deeply felt. In the end, cutting back on the gossip that dominated Let’s Get Criminal (1996) and The Edith Wharton Murders (1997) leaves room for the exploration of character that makes this Raphael’s strongest book yet.