Amanda Cross

• Born: January 13, 1926
• Birthplace: East Orange, New Jersey
• Died: October 9, 2003
• Place of death: New York, New York

Types of Plot: Amateur sleuth; cozy

Principal Series: Kate Fansler, 1964-2002

Contribution

Amanda Cross set out, with the invention of Kate Fansler, to reanimate a venerable but then neglected tradition within detective fiction: that of elegant armchair detection. Learning her lessons from the masters of the old school— Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey, Ngaio Marsh, and Agatha Christie—Cross infused her whodunits with a healthy moral awareness. She chose the academic milieu, particularly well suited for the testing of ethical positions and social responsibilities, a place where personal and political rivalries can be intense but where murder itself is still a shock. Here, too, the detective can be appreciated as an individual of exceptional sensibility and imaginative power; in this world, in fact, the detective can be a woman.

Through Cross’s creation of Kate Fansler, a professor-sleuth, the art of literate conversation at last gained credence in the American detective novel. Through her, too, Cross worked out a dynamic balance between irony and earnestness, between romance and realism, and strove to create out of the detective-story conventions something more.

Biography

Amanda Cross was the pseudonym and persona of Carolyn Gold Heilbrun, who was born on January 13, 1926, in East Orange, New Jersey. She attended Wellesley College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa; she was graduated in 1947, having married James Heilbrun in 1945. She was the mother of Emily, Margaret, and Robert.

Cross’s academic life was a full one, starred with accomplishments and recognition. She received both a master’s degree and a doctoral degree from Columbia University, in 1951 and 1959 respectively. Her teaching career began at Brooklyn College in 1959; the next year, she moved back to Columbia, where she moved up the academic rungs from instructor to full professor by 1972. Finally, Columbia gave her a chair, making her Avalon Foundation professor in the humanities. She served as visiting professor in numerous places (not unlike the peripatetic Kate Fansler), and she held four honorary degrees. Cross served as president of the Modern Language Association in 1984 and, over the years, received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

It was in 1963 that Cross began to create the kind of detective fiction she enjoyed but could no longer find in the bookstores. Beginning in 1964 she published fourteen Kate Fansler mysteries that, running counter to the prevailing hard-boiled school, secured for her a substantial readership as well as honors. Her awards included a Mystery Writers of America Scroll for In the Last Analysis (1964) and the Nero Wolfe Award for Mystery Fiction for Death in a Tenured Position (1981). Cross died in New York in 2003.

Analysis

From the beginning, Amanda Cross knew what she wanted to do with her detective. She wrote that Kate Fansler “sprang from [her] brain” as a champion of the decencies, of intelligent conversation, and of a literary legacy that challenges those who know it to be worthy inheritors. Kate was also conceived as a combatant of “reaction, stereotyped sex roles, and convention that arises from the fear of change.”

A certain Noël Coward esque conversational flair is a hallmark of the Cross mystery. This prologue from In the Last Analysis illustrates the connection between the sparkling wit and the probing intelligence that make Kate a stimulating teacher, a successful detective, and a good friend:

“I didn’t say I objected to Freud,” Kate said. “I said I objected to what Joyce called freudful errors—all those nonsensical conclusions leaped to by people with no reticence and less mind.”

“If you’re going to hold psychiatry responsible for sadistic parlor games, I see no point in continuing the discussion,” Emanuel answered. But they would continue the discussion nonetheless; it had gone on for years, and showed no sign of exhausting itself.

A conversation that goes on for years is just what Cross had in mind: provocative conversation about modern dilemmas and timeless issues, into which, now and then, Death intrudes.

Kate Fansler’s conversations ring with allusions, analogies, and epigrams. The first page alone of the first novel makes mention of T. S. Eliot, Julius Caesar, William Butler Yeats, Johann Sebastian Bach, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Jane Austen. These scholarly references are more than surface ornamentation, it should be said; to this erudite detective, the word-hoard of Western civilization suggests both theme and imaginative method. There is a particular figure, for example, looming behind the mystery of who killed Kate’s student on her psychiatrist’s couch: Sigmund Freud himself.

Poetic Justice

In The James Joyce Murder (1967), it is the Irish literary genius who serves as the intellectual model, and the poet W. H. Auden is the sleuth’s guiding spirit in the third novel, Poetic Justice (1970). Frustrated by the blind waste of the campus revolts, Kate thinks a line of Auden’s: “ . . . unready to die, but already at the stage when one starts to dislike the young.” She later recovers her tolerance of the young; in later novels she even succeeds in appreciating them, and she matures in other ways as well. That success, her continued growth as a character, the reader is made to sense, is in large part attributable to such influences as that of Auden, who, for his pursuit of frivolity balanced by earnestness, she calls “the best balancer of all.”

Auden’s influence reaches beyond the events of one novel, actually, and into the broader considerations of theory. It was Auden, after all, who laid down with such left-handed ease the consummate protocol for Aristotelian detective plotting in “The Guilty Vicarage.” Dorothy L. Sayers, whom Kate quotes frequently, edited the perceptive survey The Omnibus of Crime (1928-1934) and wrote “Aristotle on Detective Fiction,” an entertaining and imaginative look at the detective story’s qualifications as genuine art. These two serve as Cross’s authorities on matters of form.

Particularly in her early novels, Cross adheres rather closely to the formal requirements and conventional elements of the classic detective story. Her stories begin in peaceful settings or retreats, such as Kate’s office, a pastoral campus, or the edenic Berkshires; this is the stage Auden calls False Innocence. Quite soon ironic shadows develop. (The campus is so quiet, for example, because students have captured the administration building.) Then a murder is discovered. Kate finds herself in a predicament because she knows and feels some commitment to the victim, the suspect, or both, and she stays because her sense of decency impels her.

After noting numerous clues and considering various apparently innocent suspects (and engaging in fascinating conversations), Kate, assisted by Reed and sometimes by her own version of the Baker Street Irregulars, tests the evidence, makes her deductions, and reaches a solution. The story ends with an arrest, a confession, or some final illumination and a return to a peaceful state. In Auden’s terms, the Real Guilt has been located and True Innocence achieved.

Though her plotting is solid, plotting is not Cross’s principal concern. Like any mystery author worth her salt, Cross wants to challenge the conventions and transcend the formula. She is greatly interested in change, growth, and innovation, and she is deeply concerned about resistance to change, stagnation, and suspicion of the new. In one novel Kate calls this kind of poor thinking confusing morality with convention. Kate seems invariably to take the unconventional position—defending psychiatry, supporting young Vietnam draft resisters, advocating feminism—but in reality she, too, is subject to the conventions through which all human beings see and understand their lives, and she, too, is challenged to change. In effect, with each new novel Cross tests her hypothesis that when conventions (literary or social) no longer promote genuine morality or serve a civilizing purpose, they should be modified.

By insisting on the primacy of character—that is, of personal integrity—Cross bends one of the cardinal rules of the detective genre. Sayers herself, following Aristotle, wrote that there can be a detective story without character, but there can be no story without plot. Without neglecting plot, Cross makes character the solution to the crime of In the Last Analysis. It is Kate’s belief in the intrinsic nature of her friend Emanuel—something that the police investigators cannot know and cannot consider—and her willingness to trust Nicola’s dream that lead her to the distant witness who eventually remembers the physical evidence without which the police cannot work. Similarly, the discussions of Freudian analysis and of dreams in that same novel make the point that intuitive and associative thinking can be as productive as deductive logic, and thereby broaden what have been the conventional expectations of ratiocinative tales.

The Theban Mysteries and The Question of Max

Cross continued to reshape the formal elements of the whodunit with each subsequent novel. In her fourth, The Theban Mysteries (1971), she extends the usually brief preamble and predicament segments and withholds the usually numerous suspects so that the crisis in faith between the generations displaces yet illuminates the lesser crisis of the dead parent. The model of ratiocination here is Kate’s Antigone seminar, a beautifully crafted conversation of a special kind that illustrates the art of deciding what is worth examining. In her next novel, The Question of Max (1976), Cross achieved what some consider her greatest success in blending experimentation and tradition: She identifies the murderer from the beginning, the better to focus attention on that individual’s character, social conditioning, and misogynist motives.

No Word from Winifred

As she has gone about reshaping the detective story to suit her moral vision, feminism has remained foremost among the positions Cross champions. Kate herself represents the achieving woman in a once all-male domain, and there are distinctive portraits of other academic women: Grace Knowles, “the greatest living medieval scholar”; Miss Tyringham, headmistress of the Theban and “a genius at her job”; Janet Mandlebaum, the first woman on the English faculty at Harvard University; and Patrice Umphelby, “a professor, widely known and widely loved.” In No Word from Winifred (1986), the central figure of mystery is not an academic but a woman whose distinction lies in knowing what she wants. No Cross novel better illustrates the zest and the discernment that she brings to the investigation of what it means to be an exceptional woman in the late twentieth century.

As the novel opens, Larry Fansler is complaining to his law partner about the risks they will be running by inviting his strong-minded sister Kate to the annual associates party. At the novel’s close a year later, this same curmudgeon of a brother is relieved to reflect that “her being there didn’t make the slightest difference,” expressing the paternalistically mellow sentiment that “a man ought to see his kid sister once in a while.” Within this masculine frame of reference exists a most thoroughly feminist mystery quest. Unknown to her unimaginative eldest brother, Kate has, in fact, made a significant difference in the lives of the women and men who help her piece together the puzzle of the missing woman; one of those men is Larry’s law partner, Toby Van Dyne.

As usual, allusions enrich the detection process, beginning with Leighton’s suspicion that something very wrong has happened at the law office and her desire to play Watson to her aunt Kate’s Holmes. Charlotte Lucas is the first clue: Leighton knows her as a very nice coworker; Kate recognizes the name of a character of Jane Austen; the knowing reader is allowed the special pleasure of seeing in this name a reference to a stiflingly conventional approach to marriage.

When Kate needs help, she turns to professionals in both literary and investigatory fields, treating the detective Mr. Fothingale to a British high tea and playing the attentive neophyte in the headquarters of the Modern Language Association in order to take a sleuthing shortcut. In her dual role of professor and detective Kate rings changes on the conventional detective puzzle. By drawing attention to the nature of the story and people’s tendency to live by stories, Cross demonstrates that the detective formula can be transformed into an instrument of imaginative expression. Moreover, in No Word from Winifred she discriminates between conventional stories and living stories.

This is a feminist book that transcends the stereotypical. Both the women and the men whom Kate encounters along the trail of clues are believable individuals, as recognizable as Geoffrey Chaucer’s pilgrims must have been to literate Londoners at the close of the fourteenth century—typical in some ways, atypical in others. Kate is introduced to Winifred’s story, what there is of it at first, by Charlie, that is, Charlotte Lucas (who is keeping her relationship with Toby Van Dyne secret). As the biographer of the Oxford novelist Charlotte Stanton, Charlie had escorted Winifred, Stanton’s honorary niece, from her rural retreat in the United States to England, where Winifred disappeared.

The “evidence” Charlie brings to Kate consists of Winifred’s journal and Charlie’s own letters to Toby written during the trip to England. This is the beginning of a chain of communication—much of it written—from woman to sympathetic woman that organizes and gives meaning to the entire narrative, enabling Kate at last to piece together Winifred’s surprising story, a classic mystery of identity, unknown parentage, and a love triangle. Of particular stylistic merit are the journal entries, in which an entirely new and compelling voice evokes the missing woman’s presence. There is an appealing description of a childhood summer in Oxford and of the pleasure of dressing as a boy.

The motif of the quest is conventionally associated with male adventure stories (in which the female characters may be damsels in distress, tempting witches, or repulsive hags). No Word from Winifred reverses this pattern: The men have problems and the women are on quests. First, there is Winifred, whose quest for the precious time and the quiet place to write is detailed in her journal. Then comes Charlie, who has been tenacious in pursuing her desire to write the biography of Stanton. As a detective Kate is in quest of a solution, and as a connoisseur of character she is committed to preserving Winifred’s. Finally, Leighton, who has been casting about for a real occupation and who first brought the puzzle to Kate’s attention, decides to set out for the fabled Orient, to meet the paragon of womanhood face to face—and then, Leighton says, perhaps to write a book about the experience.

The Players Come Again

Later Fansler novels continued in the same vein of challenging what is “accepted,” specifically focusing on feminism and the role of women in modern society. The Players Come Again (1990) investigates human interactions, relationships, genealogy, and the influence of Greek myths on the way Western civilization views men and women. Kate’s exploration into Gabrielle Foxx, the wife of respected author Emmanuel Foxx, begins the novel. Emmanuel wrote his groundbreaking work Ariadne in 1927, a novel extraordinary primarily in that it was written with a female protagonist from a feminine point of view. As Kate uncovers layers of truth she explores Gabrielle’s “counter novel,” written in a speculative manner that questions the gender roles perpetuated by the ancient myths surrounding Araidne, Theseus, and the Minotaur. A complex story that relies heavily on letters, diaries, photographs, and records for a solution, The Players Come Again successfully intertwines plots within plots without losing the edge necessary in a modern mystery.

The Puzzled Heart

The Puzzled Heart (1998) returns to a simpler style, a more straightforward mystery in which Kate’s husband is kidnapped by a group of nameless individuals who insist she write an article retracting her views on feminism for publication in newspapers, magazines, and journals. Kate, joined by a Saint Bernard puppy named Bancroft, enlists the help of friends to track down Reed and solve a subsequent murder. Kate returns to more of an active academic setting for this novel, investigating colleagues, observing departmental politics, and interacting with students and faculty in pursuit of answers. Although still addressing concerns regarding modern issues (feminism, racism) this novel lacks the complexity of earlier works and relies heavily on action as opposed to research, although the intellectual dialogue continues to amuse fans. After Emma Wentworth, an acquaintance of Reed, offers a quote from a notebook, she says, “I keep those sentences around to quote, because they sum up neatly the bottom line for those on the far right.”

“William Bennet, Allan Bloom, and Jesse Helms, in short,” Kate said. “Well, yes, as far as their ideas go, if one can accuse Jesse Helms of having anything describable as an idea.”

Honest Doubt

Fansler’s novel Honest Doubt (2000) actually casts Kate in the role of mentor to a new investigator, Estelle “Woody” Woodhaven. Woody, a former New York defense attorney turned private eye, is in her mid-thirties, rides a motorcycle, and possesses a portly figure. Although Kate plays only a supporting role, her guiding influence leads Woody through the hallowed ivory towers of stereotypical university life so prevalent in earlier Fansler tales. The victim is an arrogant chauvinist who also happens to be a Tennyson scholar at Clifton College, providing the literary slant Cross favors and seamlessly integrating it into a potential motive for murder.

Cross’s characters are, for the most part, gentle people. Further, they are intelligent people, and their stories, under the scrutiny of a lady professor detective, become stories of romance, perhaps, or stories of psychological realism, often ironic and frequently comic, but just as tellingly angry, just as readily compassionate. In using detective fiction as a forum for addressing prevalent issues of today, Cross offers a distinctive weaving of modern academia, feminism, and mystery unique to the genre. Through Kate Fansler, her frivolous air and her sincere heart and her literary mind, the American detective story achieves charm, spirit, and intellectualism.

Principal Series Characters:

• Kate Fansler is a professor of English at a New York City university. She is married, at the end of the third novel in the series, to her longtime friend from the district attorney’s office, Reed Amhearst. An academic and a feminist as witty as she is principled, she is a friend of those with imagination and character and an enemy of unthinking conventionality.

Bibliography

Boken, Julia G. Carolyn G. Heilbrun. New York: Twayne, 1996. Focuses on Heilbrun’s mysteries written as Amanda Cross, with secondary attention paid to her academic work written under her own name.

Coale, Samuel Chase. The Mystery of Mysteries: Cultural Differences and Designs. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 2000. A study of the mysteries of Amanda Cross, Tony Hillerman, James Lee Burke, and Walter Mosely, showing how these writers use the mystery genre to introduce the concerns of minorities into fiction.

“Cross, Amanda.” In Mystery and Suspense Writers: The Literature of Crime, Detection, and Espionage, edited by Robin W. Winks and Maureen Corrigan. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1998.

Klein, Kathleen Gregory, ed. Great Women Mystery Writers: Classic to Contemporary. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. Contains an essay examining the life and works of Cross.

Kress, Susan. Carolyn G. Heilbrun: Feminist in a Tenured Position. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997. One of the few studies that looks comprehensively at Heilbrun’s oeuvre, as both feminist literary scholar and mystery writer.

Lindsay, Elizabeth Blakesley, ed. “Amanda Cross.” In Great Women Mystery Writers. 2d ed. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2007. Contains biographical information and analysis of the author’s works.

Malmgren, Carl D. Anatomy of Murder: Mystery, Detective, and Crime Fiction. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2001. Malmgren discusses Cross’s A Trap for Fools alongside many other entries in the mystery and detective genre. Bibliographic references and index.

Reynolds, Moira Davison. Women Authors of Detective Series: Twenty-One American and British Authors, 1900-2000. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2001. Examines the life and work of major female mystery writers, including Cross.

Weigman, Robyn. “What Ails Feminist Criticism? A Second Opinion.” Critical Inquiry 25, no. 2 (1999): 362-379. Uses the Amanda Cross story “Murder Without a Text” (1991) as a case study in the tensions between two generations of feminists.