Quieter than Sleep: A Modern Mystery of Emily Dickinson
Karen Pelletier is the kind of person who, driving through a  snowstorm, chants Emily Dickinson to herself as a talisman--"It sifts from Leaden Sieves, / It powders all the Wood. / It fills with Alabaster Wool / The  Wrinkles of the Road."And Joanne Dobson has done such a good job making Karen a real and complex character that we happily go along for the ride. In her first novel, Dobson (who teaches English at Fordham University and has written a book about Dickinson) adds new life to the academic mystery by making her lead character as tough as she is smart: a working-class single mother suddenly offered a chance to teach at the very posh Enfield College in Massachusetts. Professor Pelletier, who left behind a longtime lover in  New York to take the job, now has to cope with men as diverse as Randy Astin-Berger (a trendy, Mick Jagger look-alike trying to live up to his first name), a patrician college president sending out mixed messages, and--after Karen finds Randy strangled by his necktie in a closet--a comfortable old cop called Piotrowski. The reality of academic hysteria is perfectly captured; the crime and detection are carefully plotted; and Dobson fully fleshes out Karen, her daughter Amanda, and all the rest of her female characters so that they live with the reader long after the  book is finished.--Dick Adler--This text refers to theMass Market Paperbackedition.