The Theban Mysteries

Kate Fansler Mystery #4

by Amanda Cross, Carolyn G. Heilbrun

For a century, wealthy New York girls have been trained for the rigors of upper class life at the Theban, an exclusive private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Kate Fansler is lured back to her alma mater to teach a seminar on Antigone. But a hostile note addressed to Kate, the uniform mistrustfulness of her six, bright students, and the Dobermans that patrol the building at night suggest trouble on the spot. As Kate leads her class through the inexorable tragic unfolding of Antigone, a parallel nightmare envelops the school and everyone connected with it. . . .

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Academia, Female Authors, Womens, New York

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

A psuedonym of Carolyn G. Heilbrun.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It helps to be familiar with the play Antigone before reading this delightful book. Kate Fansler is on leave from her teaching job with the aim of writing a book. She is comfortably married to Reed at this point and is asked by way of a frantic phone call to come quickly to her alma mater, a private school in NYC named Theban. After hearing the pea for help, she relents and agrees to take over a symposium for one semester studying Antigone.
Kate will need to tap into her intellect and ability to read people when the mother of one of her students is found dead in the school.
When this book was published in 1971 there were social dilemmas freshly experienced with regard to the Vietnam War draft lotteries of young men, something impacting Kate's nephew as well as others in this story.
Of course Reed participates in the investigation at the school. It is a very good read.

I do believe a publisher such as Felony & Mayhem should take on publishing these older books to reach a new audience.

Library Loan

[Sharon Ouderkirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Theban Mysteries was published in 1971 when conflict over the Vietnam War was raging in the US. Against this backdrop, Kate Fansler is asked to teach a seminar on Antigone, a Greek play about Antigone's defiance of the state to do what she considered to be the moral action: Creon, the ruler has forbidden the burial of her brother, but Antigone considers that decision to be a desecration and moves forward to treat her dead brother with respect. Kate's students are all adolescents (she has accepted a term at her old girls' school), and they are all steeped into the new generation concerns of the 1970s and pitted against their more conservative elders. Kate is a liberal, from a conservative background so she has a foot in both camps.
There was one point when one of the students proudly reports that another student expressed a pro-draft opinion and got shouted down. It occurred to me that the social media bullying of today is not at all new - from the American Revolution when the Loyalists fled for their lives to Canada, to the McCarthy era, to Vietnam to the Woke movement and cancel culture, the democratic right to express an opinion that is counter to the majority has always been largely theoretical.
I don't think Cross is a great detective writer by any means, but her ideas are interesting and thought-provoking, and in this case, still relevant fifty something years after she wrote it.

[Bianca Sandale · Rating 5 out of 5]

simply love
schade nur, dass Dörlemann den 4. als drittes übersetzt hat, so fehlt Kates Heirat

[Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly quick read - begun and finished in one evening. First published in 1971, the book is the fourth (apparently) in a feminist detective series featuring academic Kate Fansler. This is the first I’ve read, so it took a few pages to understand the set up. Kate is university literature professor, but in this book is on sabbatical for a semester in order to write a book on the Victorians. Instead, she’s drafted by her Alma mater, an all girls day school in NYC called the Theban, to teach a senior seminar on the Greek play Antigone. It is at the school that Kate meets with an unexplained death....

1971 New York City is an interested change of pace for me. The book is truly a time capsule of the social and political change taking place. Several plot points hinge on draft dodging, and there is continued debate between multiple characters about the liberal hippies and youth of today versus the conservative, traditional, and patriotic older generation.

I’d be interested in reading another in the series.

[Marsha Valance · Rating 4 out of 5]

A happily married Kate, on sabbatical in the spring of 1970 to complete a book, is pressed into service at her old secondary school to lead a seminar on Antigone for graduating seniors. She soon finds herself involved in draft resistance, Esalen, family controversies, & a mysterious death--a senior's mother dead of a heart attack after a parent-teacher conference--perhaps scared to death by a pair of Doberman pinschers?

[Jan Priddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this read very much, particularly discussions of literature and the period, which I lived through.

That said, there are factual errors: the forensics are shaky, the behavior and senses of dogs are off base, not to mention claims about the number and ease of teenage boys gaining a medical draft deferment. I object to the conflicting ethics of discovering and revealing the how&why of a death as handled here and in the last Kate novel I read, and particularly to the repeated concern for the financial stability of private elite colleges and universities. Despite claims to the contrary in the text, Kate is an elitist and a snob. Private colleges are not home to "the best people" whatever is meant by that claim. Even putting the words into the mouth of a parent (without any counter) did not set right with me.

I attended an excellent public school, a friend lasted one year at Bill Gates' alma mater (hated it, hated Harvard more but stayed for the degree), and I taught at a Sacred Heart school. "Best" is the wrong adjective.

But it was still a better mystery than many I have tried to read.

[Syd · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have not read a Kate Fansler novel before, I recommend it to anyonewho enjoys their mystery novels with the mystery as only half of the focus of the story. Miss Fansler as a detective also has the distinction of being a feminist sleuth written in an era of budding feminism. Another thing to note is that both Heilbrun and Fansler were/are literature professors, and often but not always in the novels, the discussion of one of the greats or an analysis of a work are core to its telling.
This novel has the newly married, for this is the first novel in which Reed Amherst and she are wed, Kate taking a job at the private girl's high school where she grew up due to a request by an old friend. There are three main narratives in this book. The Vietnam war and its effects on the generation growing up, the analysis and discussion of Antigone by Sophocles, and the death itself. As with many mystery books, the death is not discovered until halfway through, so the first half is a set up of the scene.
I read the Fansler novels because I enjoy the literary analysis and the proper and intellectual, self-assured character of Kate, and this is probably my second favorite that I have read so far, my favorite being In the Last Analysis, the first in the series. I enjoyed delving into Antigone and I enjoyed the backdrop of the school. The mystery left enough clues to help you figure it out, but if you are looking for an amazing reveal and a clever trick of how they did it you will be disappointed. It's a solid mystery, more notable for atmosphere and the uniqueness of the setting than for the mystery itself.

[Alonzo Church · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s 1970. Oh so very 1970. The older generation goes on about Dorothy Sayers and Phillip Barry and the misfortune of Vietnam and looming coeducational education. The younger generation — they dodge the draft but are otherwise good kids. They have smart things to say about the Ancient Greek play Antigone (we have more pages of that than the investigation of the inconvenient dead body).

Yes, it’s one of those books that happened after the golden age of mystery was done and gone but still mourned by some. There isn’t much in the way of mystery or investigation. Instead, it’s a slice of fairly bland life at a girls school, and the parents and teachers of the kids. The oldsters think they are Myrna Loy or Bette Davis or Joan Crawford in her heavy eyebrow period. The young are an older person’s vision of the young, immune from the pleasures of sex or Woodstock and reasonably protected from Vietnam and LSD.

I am not the audience for this book. I like a good cozy and I like period atmosphere. But girl school doings and warmed over Thin Man banter and discussion of Greek classics are not my thing. I have not read Antigone and have no intention to do so. I like murders in my murder mysteries. This one delivers its body and its investigation late in the action and in a chatty, lethargic way.

So no thanks. But don’t let me talk you out of this if you like this author or elite school adventures.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

My second Amanda Cross experience. The good: Kate Fansler remains a charming heroine, and Cross remains adept at sketching engaging characters and writing witty dialogue. I enjoy spending time in these books and I will read more of them.

The bad: the major mystery is only solvable by guessing, which is more or less what Kate Fansler does. Kate Fansler has what might gently be termed the Jessica Fletcher Advantage: she can get the people she suspects in a room and get them to confess, either by bluffing them, charming them, or threatening them (or doing all three). It was a cheesy ploy on "Murder, She Wrote," and in "The Theban Mysteries" it just stops the story cold. IT'S OVER, EVERYONE GO HOME, KATE FANSLER GUESSED CORRECTLY AND GOT PEOPLE TO CONFESS, OH WELL SO MUCH FOR ALL THE WORK AND INVESTIGATING EVERYONE DID.

So, yes, THAT annoyed me.

The weird: A motif is that "Antigone" is oddly relevant to their times (the height of the Vietnam War). It's clear that the themes they explore are also highly relevant to OUR times. I found that was true of the previous Fansler mystery as well. The more things change etc. etc., I guess.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rereading this great series.

While on leave from the University, Kate is talked into doing a seminar on Antigone at the Theban, an upper-class girls' school which she attended in her youth. The girls taking the seminar vary from the shy to the acerbic to the brilliant. Not long after, Kate is called in when the brother of one of her girls is found hiding in the Theban; apparently frightened by the guard dogs that patrol at night, he has fallen and cut his head. His sister is sedated and refuses to talk; their grandfather, Mr. Jablon, who has raised and supported them as well as their phobic and hysterical mother, is very upset. Kate has several conversations with him, but they cannot agree; he is very conservative and patriotic and thinks the Theban is installing "radical" ideas in his granddaughter, and he is angry with her brother, who wants to dodge the draft. Kate's nephew is also against the war and wants to be a conscientious objector. The themes of Antigone resonate through the current happenings. Later Kate is called for an emergency when the mother of the family is found dead in the school. It is assumed that she was frightened to death by the dogs. The school guard, who loves the dogs, insists that they would never attack or harm anyone, but would just hold them until he came; since the dogs did not react, he insists the body must have been dumped after death. Kate and Reed team up to figure out what really happened, with somewhat surprising results. Interesting to read of the various attitudes toward the war in Viet Nam (the book was published in 1971.)

[Jim Mann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literature professor Kate Fansler is called to help her old school, the elite girls’ school, the Theban, when the woman who is to teach the senior seminar needs to take medical leave. Kate agrees to tech the seminar on Antigone. She winds up working with a very talented group of young women. But the quiet of the school is first broken when the brother of Angelica, one of the students, who is hiding there to avoid the draft, is badly frightened by the two dogs that patrol the building overnight. But worse is to come, when sometime later Angelica’s mother is found dead in the school. She died of a heart attack, and at first it’s thought that she, like her son, had been frightened by the dogs. But Kate’s husband Reed proves that can’t be the case, as the dogs would have notified their keeper had they found anyone. So Kate resolves to figure out what really happened.

The mystery is an enjoyable one, but what really makes this novel work is many of the other details. The discussions in the seminar about Antigone make me wish I was in such a seminar. And Kate’s way of handling not only the students but those around her make her a great and very likable character. The book also has a lot to say about Vietnam war and opposition to it (it was published in 1971), on inter-generational relations, on how people with very different opinions can and should deal with one another, and more.

I quite enjoy this series, and have a few more piled up on my to-be-read bookcase.

[Alison C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Professor Kate Fansler reluctantly agrees to take on a seminar at the Theban, the private girls’ school she had attended some 20 years earlier, although she has very little faith in her ability to “relate” to adolescent girls in 1970 New York City. When the mother of one of her seminar students is found dead at the school, the day after the brother of that same student was found unconscious there, naturally Kate’s curiosity is piqued - but she may have to dig deeper into familial relationships than she is comfortable doing…. I must admit that I had to look up Sophocles’ play “Antigone” before starting this book; I can retell Celtic myths for days, even some Greek, but Greek tragedies never figured too much in my schooling; that said, one doesn’t really need to know the play to get this novel as enough of it is brought into the story for context. The Vietnam War is a recurring theme in this novel, along with caustic mentions of the then-current Vice President (Agnew) who is never mentioned by name; to many modern readers these will seem as interjections of history unless, like me, they are old enough to remember those entities first-hand. I am enjoying this series, although sometimes flabbergasted by how much social attitudes and societal norms have changed since the books were written; I only wish I was as erudite as the author supposes her readers to be! Recommended.

[Jennifer Heise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather more political-history/literature musing than mystery, but an interesting document about how those who had been part of the old, pre-1960s intelligentsia world experienced the changes, both good and bad, brought about by the 60s and early 70s: what they thought about the young, this would be a good read. Having read and enjoyed Poetic Justice, I admit that perhaps Cross/Heilbrun was a bit too harsh on the college age Boomer young, though mostly young men. Here in the Theban Mysteries, confining herself mostly to young ladies of a certain level of intellectual rigor, Cross/Heilbrun is perhaps apologizing for damning all the generation... As character sketches, or perhaps archetypes, her Theban students and faculty and parents are recognizable. But I would not say there is character growth-- except perhaps in Professor Fansler... The plot twists are weak and you can definitely see the outline of the Deus ex machina trapdoor at several points in the plot. Best considered a set piece if you like the setting.

[Marci · Rating 3 out of 5]

I connected immediately with this story--it's got Prof. Kate Fansler, supposed to be on sabbatical from her university--reluctantly agreeing to teach a seminar on the ancient Greek tragedy Antigone to a small class of high-school senior girls at her alma mater, The Theban, an exclusive girls' school in New York City. What I connected with was that this is the winter term of 1970 and they're discussing every aspect of how relevant Antigone is to their modern world. I studied Antigone in the winter of 1970 in a high school English class too, and all those discussions are as familiar to me as they can be. It was like reading about my own past (minus the dead body in the art room!), and I found it relevant to revisit that era with all its problems, so many of which have ramifications right now.

[Pam Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this series by Amanda Cross. Kate Fansler is an intellectual college professor that has been roped into doing a seminar on Antigone for an ailing professor at her alma mater girl's school, the Theban. The mystery is there, but it does not dominate the entire book. The characters are predominant as we see how these characters handle the Vietnam War, when this book was written. Her writing makes you think, and are not the "fluffy" mysteries so predominant today. I have had to resort to online sites to complete my collection as her books are very hard to find. I now have them all and will enjoy reading the rest of her series. I highly recommend her books.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This literary mystery by Amanda Cross takes Kate Fansler back to her alma mater, The Theban, an exclusive girls' school in New York, to teach a seminar on Antigone.

Of course, there is a mystery to solve--a student's mother who is supposedly frightened to death by the school's two night guards--a pair of dogs.

Quirky characters, a curmudgeonly custodian, and Kate herself liven this tale of ancient tragedies, and the human foibles which have not changed since the days of Socrates.

[Rennie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A combination of a lecture on Antigone and a mystery that may not appeal to everyone. In spite of having skimmed some of the longer sections on the analysis of the play, I now know more than I ever did (or necessarily wanted to) about the Greek play but I liked the characters and the mystery well enough to keep me vested until the end. I will read Poetic Justice as a book half poetry and half mystery will be right up my alley.

[Denise Spicer · Rating 1 out of 5]

This 1971 book is the 4th in the Kate Fansler series. It has not really stood the test of time and seems very dated. A thin plot involving a (non-murder) accident is the negliblele “mystery”. Set in an elite New York City girls school, The Theban, academic and amateur sleuth Kate Fansler and her husband Reed investigate but the book is more a series of anti-war and feminist sermons. It does give some viewpoints from the 1970’s and descriptions of the locale in NYC.

[Cynthia Grove · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book in the cosy sub-genre of mysteries. Kate Fansler is on sabbatical from her role as university lecturer when she is asked to fill in part-time at her old school. The story is replete with superb observations and reflections about teaching, life, generational differences, relationships (especially child - parent), and other issues. It was written and set in 1970. If you remember those times you may well give a wry laugh, or at least smile a bit.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed The Theban Mysteries quite a lot. As you may know, Amanda Cross is a pseudonym for Carolyn Heilbrun, a Professor of English Literature at Columbia. Each of her novels is a mystery with a literary theme. In this one Kate Fansler, the main character who is also university Professor of English, was called upon to teach a seminar about Antigone at the exclusive NY Girls' School she had attended many moons earlier. Like Kate's students, I did my homework as expected and read Antigone. I'm glad I did because it helped me enjoy the storyline so much more.

[Nick Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very literate murder mystery, little bit too wordy to my taste. Lots of verbal circumnavigating, and the solution to the mystery plunges down on a unsuspecting audience like a deus ex machina. Wouldn't recommend it.

[Bonnie Fazio]

I am entering this many years later, after finding a list of books I needed to read for a Friends of Mystery conference, at which Amanda Cross (aka Carolyn Heilbrun) was to appear. I don't remember it well, but do remember liking her books somewhat. Educated guess as to the year I read it.

[Yvonne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I randomly picked this up at a second-hand bookshop in Vilnius for 50 cents but would have happily paid a regular prices. It has feminism, intrigue, dogs, angry girls, powerful women, rebellion, and the Greeks. What’s not to like? It does help to be familiar with Antigone though.

[Sloane Barbre · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only way this book can be truly enjoyed is if one has a thorough knowledge of the classics— even then, it’s terrible pretentious and pondering. The characters don’t speak like real people, and the plot isn’t strong enough to make up for it.

[Boweavil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written, lightweight, fun, literate and a page turner. Enjoy.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyable mystery featuring HYPER INTELLIGENT PEOPLE TALKING.

[Susan Mock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it, not because of the mystery, but because of the writing. Parts of it were like taking a class in Antigone. Okay, that doesn't sound like fun, but it was. I only wish I had her for Literature in college.

[sezen]

Mysteries almost never work; often they are not even mysteries, but I still love these series.

[Taco Beta · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too academic for me, and not enough mystery. I lost insterest at about 50% and eventually stopped at 75%. I enjoyed the dialogues and writing in general.

[AJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a strange book!