Amanda Cross: The James Joyce Murder (UK 2018)

From the Publisher:
Amanda Cross musters up an ingenious solution to an impossible scenario in this penetrating literary mystery, The James Joyce Murder.
On the famous Joycean day of June 16th, Kate Fansler attends the annual Bloomsday celebration, kicking off the start to an idyllic and literary summer. But in the company of an exuberant young nephew and two graduate students, there is not much time for peace and quiet.

The idyll is further shattered when an unpleasant next-door neighbour is found murdered. Although the murder appears to have no connection to the day's celebrations, no one can shake the suspicion that James Joyce is somehow linked, not even unliterary police inspector Stratton.

Kate is determined to find the solution to this extraordinary murder, even if she finds the culprit in her own home...
Follow amateur sleuth Kate Fansler in this gripping murder mystery series, continuing with Poetic Justice and The Theban Mysteries.

Amanda Cross: The James Joyce Murder. Pan Macmillan / Bello, ISBN: 9781509820023 (March, 2018), 166 p., £10.99, eBook £3.99.

Amanda Cross: The James Joyce Murder (USA 1990)

From the Publisher:
"If by some cruel oversight you haven't discovered Amanda Cross, you have an uncommon pleasure in store for you." -- The New York Times Book Review

What can be more idyllic than a summer in the Berkshires, sorting through James Joyce's letters to his publisher? What could be more peaceful than long walks in the woods with friends old and new?

Well, just about anything. Kate Fansler finds that literary ability and love of nature are far less vital than supersleuthing skill when her next-door neighbor is murdered-and all her houseguests are prime suspects...

"No one has a sharper eye than Amanda Cross." -- The Washington Post Book World

Amanda Cross: The James Joyce Murder. When the locals and literati come together in a small rural town, anything can happen - including murder, as Kate Fansler soon learns. Ballantine Books, ISBN: 0345346866 (February, 1990), 197 p., $4.95.

Amanda Cross: The James Joyce Murder (USA 1982)

From the Publisher:
"NO ONE HAS A SHARPER EYE THAN AMANDA CROSS!" -- Washington Post Book World
What could be more idyllic than a summer in the Berkshires, sorting through James Joyces letters to his publisher. What could be more peaceful than long walks in the woods with friends old and new.

Well, just about anything. Kate Fansler finds that literary ability and love of nature are far less vital than supersleuthing skill when her next-door neighbor is murdered -and all her house guests are prime suspects...

It all adds up to a delightful mystery in the best whodunit tradition!

Amanda Cross: The James Joyce Murder. A Kate Fansler Mystery. Ballantine Books, ISBN: 0345302141 (July, 1982), 217 p., $2.50.

Amanda Cross: The James Joyce Murder (USA 1967)

From the Publisher:
Amanda Cross's previous book, In the Last Analysis, won a Mystery Writers of America scroll as one of the three best first mystery novels of 1964. This second novel, which is equally witty and sophisticated, again stars Kate Fansler, the engaging college professor and not too reluctant amateur sleuth.

A friend of Kate's girlhood is the daughter of Sam Lingerwell, one of America's great publishers. Lingerwell has recently died, leaving in the family summer home in the Berkshires a treasure trove of letters from Lawrence, Joyce, and other eminent writers whom he first published in the United States. Kate's friend, now in a nunnery, has asked her to supervise the sorting out of this correspondence.

Thus it is that a somewhat stunned Kate finds herself spending the summer in the Berkshires in a household which seems, when she is forced to discuss it with the police, to defy orderly description. Suffice it to say that its various occupants include an eight-year-old boy and an elderly and highly distinguished woman professor emeritus. Between these two extremes range a lively assortment of characters, mostly academic-and, of course, Reed Amhearst, the New York assistant district attorney who is Kate's long-tried friend and mentor. Unsuited to the rigors of country life, Reed denies that even Kate can keep him in the Berkshires. Only murder can do that.

Kate shares his discomfort. "I have become very disillusioned," she tells Reed, "about the rural character. I suspect that Wordsworth, when he took to the country, never spoke to anyone but Dorothy and Coleridge, and perhaps an occasional leech gatherer." But having promised to devote her summer to a sorting of some fascinating literary remains, mostly Joycean, she must stay to cope. And cope she does... with the combined, and occasionally merged, problems of James Joyce, local help, graduate students, summer people reputed by the natives to conduct weekly orgies, and -- Murder. Thanks to her tenacity, Reed's perspicacity, and the fact that nobody stops talking, most of the problems are eventually solved.

THE JAMES JOYCE MURDER is perfect reading for those who enjoy Josephine Tey and Dorothy Sayers and the other classic mystery writers. A satisfying mystery in its own right, this novel also contains a number of bonuses for Joyceans, some very obvious indeed, and some so subtle that the JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY may well have to look into the matter.

Amanda Cross is a writer who admits to having spent some time in the academic world. Asked whether she shares her heroine's experiences of rural and social life, Miss Cross's response is an emphatic denial.

Amanda Cross: The James Joyce Murder. Macmillan / A Cock Robin Mystery, 176 p., $3.95.