Department Chair Isabel Vittorio was flamboyant, difficult,
sometimes brilliant, and skilled at ratcheting the
animosities within her department. When she's found
murdered at her desk, the university is in an uproar and
faculty member Miriam Held is nervous about where this
investigation will lead. Knowing she's a suspect -- Miriam
lost the department chair job to Isabel and to add insult
to injury, the two were former lovers -- Miriam wants the
murderer discovered.
But politics at the university seem a little murkier than
usual, and as Miriam digs into the goings on in her
department, there are few who don't fall under suspicion.
Bringing blood and mayhem into the Department of Literature
and Rhetoric at Austin University seems to have triggered
something dark in the department.
Homosexual liaisons, university politics, competitive
professors and racial issues -- could Ms. Miller have
concocted a brew more inclined to froth over and burn
everyone? You'll enjoy the smart humor in this book --
although it leans somewhat toward the British style of
writing where the characters seem just a little detached. I
didn't quite believe the emotions of some -- but maybe
that's just the university thing.
In Death of a Department Chair, protagonist Miriam
Held recounts the events of the previous fall when she was
suspected of killing Isabel Vittorio, the chair of her
department and her former lover. The controversial and
contrary Vittorio was, at the time of her death,
attempting to block the hire of a brilliant African
American female professor. Already under siege for her
attempts to increase diversity on campus, Miriam is forced
to defend her reputation and her life. As she searches for
the truth, Miriam amasses evidence that leaves few friends
and colleagues free from suspicion. Both a classic
whodunit and a witty satire, Death of a Department
Chair dramatizes how communities can create the very
climate of mistrust and paranoia that victimizes them.
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