cover image Blue Blood

Blue Blood

Pamela Thomas-Graham. Simon & Schuster, $23 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-684-84527-2

Veronica ""Nikki"" Chase (A Darker Shade of Crimson, 1998), assistant professor in Harvard's Economics department and its only African-American, rushes to New Haven to comfort her old friend, Gary Fox, a dean at Yale, when his wife, Amanda, is murdered. When Gary falls under suspicion, Nikki vows to clear him. Amanda was a gorgeous, brainy blonde, ambitious, politically conservative, irresistible to men. She also had an unpublicized affection for the underdog and an active extramarital sex life; either may have led to her death. Although the police clear Gary, Nikki is incensed that they've arrested an obviously innocent black student for the killing. When Gary's best friend dies, leaving an oddly convenient confession to Amanda's murder and impugning Gary's reputation, Police Sgt. Timothy Heaney accepts Nikki as a cohort. Her immaculate academic credentials and her black skin allow her to maneurver smoothly among the Yale establishment of genteel blue bloods as easily as among the social activists of the Resurrection Tabernacle Deliverance Church. In a harrowing climax, her sharp eye identifies the murderer, who arrogantly confesses before attempting to throw her out of a carillon tower. Nikki comes off as a bit too lucky as a detective--she always seems perfectly placed to overhear incriminating conversations. Nonetheless, Thomas-Graham shows that racial prejudice is a two-way street, develops characters more fully rounded than in her first novel and crisply evokes a hulking Yale campus set like a medieval fortress within a decaying, racially divided city. (May)