Reliable Sources

Alex Bernier #1

by Beth Saulnier

An Alex Bernier Mystery
Alex Bernier lives in the sleepy university town of Gabriel in upstate New York, and writes for the Gabriel Monitor. When her boyfriend, Adam, is found dead at the bottom of a local gorge, Alex is convinced that his death could not have been suicide, and so she beings an investigation of her own, following clues that lead her on a dangerous trail, ultimately to the murderer himself.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

339 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

aka Elizabeth Bloom

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty average, unspectacular little book that my wife made me read. Two weeks after reading it I couldn’t remember much about it, except that it takes place in Ithaca, where I went to college.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually really liked this! It’s set in a fictional town that everyone knows is Ithaca, NY (but I’m not sure why it’s so obvious that it’s specifically Ithaca). I feel like the tone of the writing is 20-30 years ahead of its time; I think it would mesh well with today’s 20-somethings. It’s not really award-winning prose, but I really liked the protagonist and the plot held my interest (even though the whole thing is spelled out for you in the last 15 pages—not a wildly creative reveal).

I hope to read further in this series, even though I’ll have to buy the books.

[warmfuzzydyke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Beth Saulnier's books about the town of "Gabriel," NY, and "Benson University." They're thinly (VERY THINLY) veiled tales of Ithaca, NY and Cornell University, writ large and sarcastic, with love. The main character is a small-town straight-white-woman journalist who does annoying things like talk a lot about going jogging so she can eat what she wants without getting any fatter, but she's overall fun in a fast-talkin' brassy-sassy-mouthy smartypants kind of way, she makes pesto that sounds amazing and hosts regular food/social gatherings that sound fun (if one is an extrovert, which I am not, so double bonus points for a story that's not really about me), and she's Down With The Gays in a not-too-offensive cool-straight-lady kind of way. And anyway the stuff that's really fun is the stuff about Ithaca. This book features a scandal involving a murder meant to look like a gorge-related suicide, queer student organizing (in a way that is not that effective and thus rang sort of true to my experience as a student, if not the experience of queer students who came after me who were actually kind of awesome at organizing), and the inevitable wackiness that happens when the queer students want to build a queer program house on the site of a gay-bashing--which is the Arts Quad, which in Saulnier's version of Cornell has a SUPER SECRET NUCLEAR POWER PLANT UNDER IT. Oops, I just gave away the plot. But really. A nuclear power plant under the Arts Quad? People thinking they could have a queer program house when the university administration has been so dedicated to eliminating program houses because they are scary what with the spectre of all the people of color building community and power in them, Risley or McLLU be damned, since the early 90s? The idea that a student group would think that they had a prayer in hell of getting ANYTHING built on the Arts Quad and messing up the publicity pictures? I basically giggled through this whole book, and if you went to Cornell or lived in Ithaca for any length of time, you probably will too. Feminism Lite, yes. Enjoyable trashy fun, YES.

[Lise Petrauskas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't remember the last time I started and finished a book on the same day! I clearly really enjoyed this pot-boiler and I especially enjoyed it because I went to high school with the author and it was fun to notice the small things like characters named after close friends of hers. Add to that that I've worked at newspapers and that as a photographer during the years when people still used darkrooms, that the main character is a strong, uninhibited, intelligent young woman, and that a there were enough references to art and painting and science and history to keep me from boredom, and I was hooked. In spite of the literary and cultural references, this is most definitely a pulp novel with no pretensions to be high brow lit-tra-ture. Saulnier is clearly enjoying playing with the clichés of mystery and crime fiction, but the voice of the book is breezy and confident enough in its simplicity that I didn't feel like I was being tricked or toyed with or the brunt of some literary in-joke. Alex Bernier was good company for a day. I'm definitely going to see what she's up to next.

ETA: The TV show this reminds me of? Murder She Wrote, and I mean that as a compliment.

[Gary Sedivy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 'Detective Chick' - well actually, the heroine is not a detective, but a writer for the newspaper she works for in a fictitious college town in New York. It appears this town, if you go by the blurbs in the 'Fantastic Fiction' website, must be the most crime ridden college town in the universe. Kind of like the TV series, "Murder, She Wrote", set in a little NE town - it was dangerous to be her friend, because so many of them died!
On top of that, she writes a movie review column for the paper, it's amazing she can solve anything.
Not a great story, especially since the whole sequence of murders were explained in the penultimate chapter. (I don't like to read the whole book, and then have to read the end to find out how the murder was done. Would rather have it dealt out in bits and pieces so I work on figuring it out.
By the way, I 'knew' who did the deed before the end, just didn't grok the reason for it.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this book from the beginning. I hated the ending. Too improbable. Too rabbit out of the hat mystery wrap-up in the last 20 pages. But I liked the beginning so much, I am going to read the next one in the series. Wish me luck.

[Janna]

read a long time ago - made me keep reading the series.

[Maddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

RATING: 3.75