And the mystery heats up...

Two things that keep reappearing in the novel are that Janet was a very beautiful girl, “odd…that someone should have murdered her,” and that “April is the cruelest month.” I’m curious to figure out how these two elements fit into the story. Could Janet’s beauty be a motive to kill? Could April have some significance to Janet? Then again, isn’t it ironic that April is chosen for Janet’s month of death since it usually signifies rebirth, innocence, youth, and new beginnings?

Aside from these observations, new pieces of evidence are slowly being introduced into the case thanks to Kate, her soon-to-be-nephew Jerry, and Kate’s detective friend Reed. For example, it has been discovered that Janet left a will (why??). In it, she left her share of money to a man named Daniel Messenger, who upon being questioned by Chicago police claims to have never met the girl, which is very suspicious and only leads to more questions (FYI: he lives in Chicago and the novel takes place in New York). Also, by cleverly “bumping into” Emanuel’s patients (i.e. Horan and Frederick Sparks), Kate and Jerry have been able to find out more about them and assess their potential to commit murder. Shockingly, in a twist of events, Kate herself has become a target (similar to in Gaudy Night how Harriet is targeted in order to threaten her to stop trying to find the perpetrator). Thanks to Reed, Kate now knows that an anonymous letter has been sent to the police claiming that Kate murdered Janet because she published one of Janet’s papers as her own and was in love with Emanuel and felt threatened by the girl’s beauty and presence. The police are taking it seriously and have moved Kate to their suspect list because Kate is so closely connected with Emanuel and his family, but it doesn’t make sense since she’s the main character of the story and wouldn’t have sent Janet to Emanuel (her supposed lover) in the first place if she was threatened by the girl. Plus, it’s been brought to the readers’ attention that not too long ago Kate was engaged to be married. (Why is it that the women in these two books were engaged to be married, but didn’t end up doing so? Common theme?)

I’ve also realized that what makes this book part of the academic genre is the fact that it has so many academic allusions—far more than Gaudy Night. Being an English professor, Kate’s character is prone to spark up literary conversations. Even though she is playing detective and trying to clear Emanuel’s name (and now her own!), she still has classes to teach and often mentions how she must still tackle Thomas Carlyle or Daniel Deronda. I’m sure I would have a greater understanding of this book—or at least of the humorous comments made pertaining to books, if I read more of the classics/authors mentioned. (For example, at one part, a fellow professor/friend of Kate’s, remarks that Frederick Sparks, whom Kate is attempting to find out about, “thinks The Cenci is better than Macbeth.” Having knowledge of The Cenci would help me understand exactly what significance this has and what it means in the academic world. In the least it would help me understand why this is shocking.) In this respect, I feel this genre could have a tendency to exclude people because not everybody is familiar with the novels it brings up. Then again, although these allusions add to the novel, one can certainly understand it and even enjoy its plot having not read any of the other novels it alludes to.

Still, this fact proves to me that in order to be academic, a novel must include a literary air or mention several literary works. Gaudy Night took place at a college (which is obviously academic since there were classes, students, etc.) and used bits of Latin throughout. In contrast, this book In the Last Analysis was only set at the college when Kate was interrogated by the detective and told that Janet had been murdered. Instead, it focuses more on literary novels and authors, like D.H. Lawrence whose novels could somehow be connected with the case…

No New Leads

In a way, this book is most similar to Gaudy Night due to the fact that it takes a while for action to occur. The book is still interesting, but like in Gaudy Night there are “lulls” where no results are produced in the case. Right now, there are no new leads—Emanuel is still the primary suspect. The picture of a young man that the victim, Janet, had in her purse at the time she was murdered has still not been located. Instead, there have been more interrogations.

Kate reintroduced the academic setting by going to Janet’s dorm room, located in the Graduate Women’s Dormitory, and questioning her neighbors. However, although I thought this might be promising and bring in the academic aspect, so far it hasn’t since even her neighbors don’t know much about Janet. She was a solitary person who didn’t seem to have any friends. Even the girl who knows everybody’s business, Jackie, had little to say about Janet except that Janet carried a notebook all the time, was being analyzed (which the reader clearly already knows), and was once spotted with a man (whom she cannot remember the face of). While looking through Janet’s school records, Kate only developed more questions like why did Janet move to New York and why did her grades drop from A’s in college to B/B-‘s in grad school? Was something on Janet’s mind?

Aside from this, Kate has her niece’s fiancé Jerry on the case as well who is attempting to analyze the mystery from the male perspective and as an objective third party, which involves monitoring Emanuel’s movements (behind Kate’s back) to make sure he is indeed innocent. So far, all he discovered was that the porter’s suit was stolen when Janet’s room was broken into and that Emanuel does not seem to be the type to murder somebody.

Then again, it’s difficult for both Kate and Jerry to extract information because they are not real detectives and people won’t readily respond to their questions without knowing the reason they’re being asked. For this reason, they must casually lead into conversations and be cautious of how much they ask and how they ask it. This differs from Gaudy Night since, in that book, there wasn’t as much questioning and it didn’t have as much of a “detective aura” about it. For this reason, the sheer analytic approach in solving the murder seems to make this book academic.

An interesting thing I noticed about this book is that I have no perception of time while reading this novel. It seems modern. In Gaudy Night, due to the social customs of the 1920s and the obvious gender role differences, I was constantly reminded of the time period. This simply isn’t present in Cross’s novel. That’s what makes this mystery so interesting—it can apply to this time period. It could easily be the script for the next episode of CSI or Law and Order.