Amanda Cross, pseudonym of Carolyn G. Heilbrun (Carolyn Gold Heilbrun) Biography

American academic and detectivestory writer, educated at Wellesley College and Columbia University, and from 1972 Professor of English at Columbia; she is the author of critical studies on English literature and a number of detective stories, usually set in academic surroundings and written from a feminist point of view, in which Kate Fansler, Professor of English at an unnamed university in New York, brings the methods of literary criticism to bear on the crimes. In the Last Analysis (1964) is the first and perhaps the best; other titles include The James Joyce Murder (1967), The Theban Mysteries (1971), Death in a Tenured Position (1981; UK title A Death in the Faculty), and A Trap for Fools (1989).