What better locale for a feminist murder mystery than Harvard, where women make up a minuscule three percent of the tenured faculty and sexism-and-sherry in the senior common room is still an honored tradition?…

As it happens, I went to Harvard, and was prepared from page 1 [of Death in a Tenured Position] to cheer Cross' spirited dishing of my lamentably sexist alma mater. Said dishing is easily the book's best feature. This time out, Cross … is a better feminist than mystery novelist. A paucity of plausible suspects is one problem. Kate Fansler is another. Americans—even rich, WASP, elegant, tenured Americans—just don't say "beastly," call their nieces "my dear" and complain pedantically about the perfectly acceptable phrase "as such." Fansler is supposed to be ultracivilized; to my ear, she just sounds arch.

Katha Pollitt, "Books in Brief: 'Death in a Tenured Position'" (copyright © 1981 by the Foundation for...