Totally agree with Kevin Killian's review--Joanne Dobson makes Emmeline Foster SO real, she is as compelling as the rest of the main characters in this third-in-the-series installment. The literary aspects of the entire series, and the concept of "original idea" versus plagarism in this book, add spice for those seeking more than just a standard mystery.

It is Enfield College in western New England, (one thinks of names of actual colleges, Elmira, Endicott), and Professor Pelletier is teaching Poe to freshmen. Poe was not emotionally balanced. Maybe dead women turned him on.

Karen Pelletier from Lowell, Massachusetts, a grittier place, was in her third year at Enfield. Students at Enfield felt a sense of entitlement. The professor ate dinner with a friend from the sociology department on maternity leave. Elliot Corbin, a Poe scholar, wants to be the Palaver, (yes, Palaver), Endowed Chair and the department head, Miles Jewell, dislikes him. His office is next to Karen Pelletier's.

There is a nineteenth century American literature Study Group that meets monthly. A colleague tells Karen she should be discussing Poe as a discursive function. Enfield College received a bequest for a research center, stipulating that Karen be the director of it. Karen has a special delivery package mailed to her in conjunction with her leadership of the center. Other people in the department would be happy to derail the intended women's center and use the funds for other kinds of literary studies.

Elliot Corbin becomes a homicide victim. Karen's name is found at the crime scene. Lieutenant Piotrowski gives her the news and stays for a plate of her Thanksgiving fare. The lieutenant asks Karen to help with the investigation.

Karen rewards herself with cookies and CNN to get her grading completed. The semester is tight and the pace is brutal as everything must be fit into the period between Labor Day and Christmas. It turns out that there is a missing student, Mike Vitale, who bears a striking resemblance to the dead man. The work is a lot of fun to read and seems to be a realistic portrayal of academic life.

Congratulations to Joanne Dobson for inventing a 19th century poet so convincingly, she almost had me convinced that Emmeline Foster actually lived. The details of her poor adumbrated life ring true, and her involvement with the desperate, paranoid Edgar Allan Poe had the authentic tragic ring to it. Finding out that she is only a fictional character made me feel diminished a bit, as though history had gotten suddenly a bit smaller.

Karen Pelletier's struggles in academia parallel Foster's journey towards artistic creation, and Karen's relationship with her daughter and her family are well observed and wry. I didn't think the Lieutenant whose lips strike her more and more favorably over the course of the novel was all that exciting. But, at least he was there in the clinch. I'll look forward to Dobson's continuing treatment of this relationship, even if not very eagerly. Good work all around, and plenty of fun and suspense.

The Raven and the Nightingale is the third volume in Professor Joanne Dobson's series about Professor Karen Pelletier. In Quieter than Sleep, readers first met the professor. Doctor Pelletier found herself pregnant as a teen in high school, and dropped out of her plans to go to Smith to marry her truck driver lover. After a difficult pregnancy and marital abuse, she put her life together to raise her daughter as a single Mom while pursuing her academic career. Finally finding love with a cop in New York, she abandoned him to follow her desire for a career to settle at tony, elite Enfield College in New England. Arriving at Enfield, she became the new kid on the English department block sharing responsibilities for 19th century American literature with an aggressive, pompous womanizer who wanted to discuss more than literature with her. She found herself attracted to all the wrong men, and attracted attention from men she would rather avoid. Ah well, back to those term papers! In The Northbury Papers, the professor has an unusual stroke of luck that makes her career prospects much brighter.

Those who liked Quieter than Sleep or The Northbury Papers will probably enjoy The Raven and the Nightingale as well.

I recommend reading Quieter than Sleep before this book because the characters won't make as much sense without having read that book first. Otherwise, you may find this book to be an average literary mystery.

Due to publicity about her forthcoming center for the study of women writers, the professor receives a huge box of papers authored by Emmeline Foster sent by an alum who had recently found them. Ms. Foster is connected to Edgar Allan Poe through a personal relationship and her suicide shortly following the publication of "The Raven." The mystery quickly develops as the manuscripts begin disappearing from the professor's office. Why?
Before long, the mystery is compounded by the death of a prominent Poe scholar, known for his book, The Transvestite Poe. Once again, stoic police lieutenant Charlie Piotrowski is asked to investigate, and the professor is up to her neck in mysteries to solve. Ultimately, she will have to unravel the relationship between Ms. Foster and Mr. Poe in order to understand the present murder.

Before considering reading this book, please be aware that Professor Dobson does not use the same approach to literary mysteries that Ms. Jane Langton does. Facts and references to Poe are few and far between. You are assumed to know about Poe rather than to become more familiar with him. In addition, the fascinating Emmeline Foster is a fictional character. Had she been a real character about whom these speculations could have been developed, the book would have been a much stronger one in terms of appeal to me.

The heart of the book (and why I rated it above three stars) concerns the current academic debate about originality in authorship. While everyone knows that literal copying without credit is plagiarism, when must literary "borrowing" of source concepts be acknowledged? And how? Professor Dobson does a nice job of providing examples of what should and should not be done.

Along the way, she provides a larger than previous dose of humor in her use of stilted academic language.

As I finished the book, I found myself more aware than ever to give credit to those who have improved my thinking.

Joanne Dobson's mystery of academia is a passable book. It certainly wasn't unpleasant to read, but I don't feel I gained much from reading it. Most of the facts in the life of Edgar Allan Poe were known to me prior to reading this novel, but since the Poe connection was what drew me to the book, I can't help but feeling a little cheated. That's my issue, though, not yours.

Main character Karen Pelletier is innocuous enough, and the book is at it's most interesting in the classroom scenes, where Dobson is able to inject some life into Pelletier's dialog. Other than that, she's just a ham-fisted academic trying to act sly when asked to question her fellow professors after the murder of a colleague.

I didn't get a read on any of the other characters at Enfield College. Most were academic archetypes rather than true characters. I was neither intrigued nor interested in the petty squabbling and ca't get behind any murder motivated by achieving tenure.

The love interest/cop is an okay guy, smart in a Matlock kind of way, which is to say that he seems dumb on first meeting. Unfortunately, it will be my only reading because this book just didn't grab me and make me want to read the rest of the series.

On a semi-related note, it's kind of sad that some people have built certain literary figures up to the point that they are unable to see his flaws. Poe was a deeply flawed man, very whiny and of dubious character. He really did many of the things of which Dobson accuses him. That makes him no less a genius, no less fascinating.