Joanne Dobson--Writer, Teacher, Speaker
When that old dog, Trouble, slinks into Karen Pelletier's English Department office dragging his crime-writer mistress behind him, Professor Karen Pelletier must solve a murder while dodging book thieves, suspiciously well-to-do librarians, an old flame, and hundreds of academic conferees with their eyes on Death and Deviance--and what's this about a missing student?

Reviews of
The Maltese Manuacript

"Oh, what fun . . ." New York Times

"An academic novel both gutsy and romantic . . . mystery scholars and collectors will eat this one up." Publishers Weekly

The Maltese Manuscript

In classic noir tradition, English professor Karen Pelletier gains a client when her office door opens and a famous crime novelist enters. The author is dogged by Trouble, a Rottweiler, and by a problem. And since the tough-gal celebrity writer, Sunnye Hardcastle, is keynote speaker at the upcoming Enfield College Women's Studies conference on Crime Fiction, Karen is hooked.

Little does she expect a priceless manuscript to be stolen from the college library, the thief to be found dead in the library's closed stacks, and her famous client to be suspected of both crimes. All this occurs smack dab in the middle of a feminist conference on the crime novel, and Karen must use her investigative skills to detect which of the many conferees has set out to Deconstruct Death.