Cold and Pure and Very Dead: A Karen Pelletier Mystery
Karen Pelletier, assistant professor of English at prestigious Enfield  College in Massachusetts, has opened a can of 44-year-old worms by tellingNew York Timeswriter Marty Katz that, in her opinion,Oblivion  Fallswas the greatest literary work of the past century.Like Grace Metalious's 1956 cause célèbre,Peyton Place,Oblivion Fallsblew the steamy lid off a respectable New England college  town, made ground-breaking strides up the bestseller lists, and made a brilliant  if briefly lit star of its author, the now reclusive Mildred Deakin. And now,  thanks to Pelletier's intentionally provocative throwaway answer to a snooty  writer's question,Oblivion Fallsis back in the limelight: an Oprah's  Book Club selection, at the top of theTimesbestseller list, and one of  Amazon.com's top 10. None of which explains why Marty Katz was found in the  driveway of goat farmer Milly Finch, shot dead by a 30-30 Winchester."Re-e-e-ally?'" This was strange, even tragic, but so far I couldn't  see any "circumstances" that linked the killing to me. "That's too bad," I said,  then added, inanely, "he wrote so well.""Did he?" the pale lieutenant asked, and exchanged another significant look with  her subordinate. "Well, so did she, obviously. Write well, I mean. We haven't  released this information to the general public yet, Professor, but a long time  ago Milly Finch was a famous novelist. She published under the name of Mildred  Deakin."And with that, Pelletier and her longtime partner-in-solving-crime,  Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant Charlie Piotrowski, are off. Nicely paced,  plotted, and peopled with distractions romantic and decidedly otherwise (from  campus newcomers Jake Fenton, the roguish author-in-residence, and Ralph Emerson  Brooke, the fifties hipster sitting uneasily in the endowed Chair of Literary  Studies, to the well-limned Milly Finch herself), this fourth entry in the  Pelletier series may please newcomers most. Good as this is, Dobson's regulars  have come to expect even more from Professor Pelletier.--Michael Hudson