From Publishers Weekly
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 detectiveAshe 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. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-Harvard economics professor Nikki Chase is awakened by a four a.m. phone call from her friend Gary Fox, a dean at Yale University, with the news that his controversial, conservative wife Amanda has been found murdered on the streets of New Haven. Nikki rushes to support Gary only to discover that he is one of the suspects. Nikki also uncovers a maze of relationships that Amanda had with a minister, a student, a multimillionaire benefactor, and a professor-any of whom could have been her killer. Life at an Ivy League university, with its behind-the-scenes politics, internal squabbles, and academic infighting, forms the backdrop for this mystery. Nikki is a smart black woman who forges friendships with policemen, ministers, professors, and students. This is the second in a series that has appeal for mystery lovers, Ivy League wanna-bes, or those who like a good story with a hint of romance.Pam Spencer, Young Adult Literature Specialist, Virginia Beach, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Black economics professor Nikki Chase takes on murder at Yale. Second in the successful Ivy League series.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Nikki Chase, a black Harvard professor, is shocked to learn that the wife of an old friend and aspiring president of Yale has been murdered. News that the suspect in the murder of the beautiful law professor is a black male student compels Chase to investigate and keep a wary eye on racial tensions between the university and the nearby black community where the woman was slain. In this second novel in the Ivy League Mystery series, Thomas-Graham skillfully portrays both the academic worlds of Yale and Harvard and the distressed black community of simmering resentments and incendiary elements waiting to explode. Chase uses her contacts in both communities and her investigative skills to uncover adultery, greed, lust, and betrayals beneath the civilized Gothic surfaces of Yale. She also struggles with her own racial loyalties as she rekindles a relationship with a white ex-boyfriend and ponders the possibilities embodied in an activist local black minister. Vanessa Bush

From Kirkus Reviews
What could lure economics professor Nikki Chase (A Darker Shade of Crimson, 1998) out of Cambridge to gray, dangerous little New Haven? Only the murder of her old friend Garrett Fox's wife AmandaThe Neutron Blonde,'' a law professor who would say anything to curry favor with the right wing and get the attention of the press. Amanda's been found a few blocks, and a world, away from the Yale campus near the Resurrection Tabernacle Deliverance Church. Since one of her students, black football star Marcellus Tyler, admits staying after her last night class to talk to her, the police are about to lock him up. But Nikki, who doesn't believe the shortest distance between crime and punishment is one of those ubiquitous young black men who just happens to fit the description that's always giventhis time by Gary Fox's acolyte Giselle (ne Jane) Storrsgoes to work on Marcellus's behalf, concentrating on a pair of redneck donors to Mother Yale who plan to endow a chair in Amanda's honor, and a pair of Resurrection Tabernacle ministers who know more than they're saying about the unexpected ties Amanda had to their church. Thomas-Graham has a nice eye for every arresting location in the Yale environs, but her mystery this time is little more than a collection of ill-developed hints, one of which happens to pay off. Like so many other Harvard alums, she returns from Yale empty-handed. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
New Haven Register (CT) Suspensful...swiftly moving...thought-provoking.

Book Description
Conservative Yale law professor Amanda Fox lived for controversy and academic celebrity -- until someone decided she should die for them. For Harvard economics professor Nikki Chase, it starts with a desperate call from her old friend Gary Fox, now a dean at Yale. His wife, Amanda, has been brutally stabbed to death in inner-city New Haven. The police soon arrest one of Amanda's students for the crime, but Nikki's investigation uncovers plenty of potential suspects. There's Max and Jared Fisch, bitterly feuding scions of a powerful right-wing family with as much to hide as it has millions to give Yale. High-profile activist Reverend Leroy Saunders had a wealth of philosophical -- and personal -- scores to settle with Amanda. And there's Gary himself, poised to become Yale's next president, who was on increasingly acrimonious and very public outs with his wife. As a powder keg of racial tension and political maneuverings threatens to ignite, Nikki draws on the help of old and new friends as she trails the real killer -- and deadly truths that will reverberate from Yale's gothic towers through New Haven's toughest streets.

About the Author
Pamela Thomas-Graham is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard-Radcliffe College, where she received a degree in Economics magna cum laude and was awarded the Captain Jonathan Fay prize -- the highest annual honor bestowed by Radcliffe -- as the student "showing the greatest promise" in her graduating class. A graduate of Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, Thomas-Graham was an editor of Harvard Law Review. At thirty-two she became one of the most influential women in American business when she was named the first black woman partner at McKinsey & Company, the world's largest management consulting firm. She is currently executive vice president at NBC and the president and CEO of CNBC.com. Thomas-Graham's first novel, A Darker Shade of Crimson, was named a People magazine "Page Turner of the Week," and her third Ivy League mystery, Burnt Orange, set at Princeton University, is coming next year in hardcover from Simon & Schuster. Originally from Detroit, Thomas-Graham divides her time between Manhattan and Westchester County with her husband, writer and attorney Lawrence Otis Graham, and their son.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
One of America's most successful African-American businesswomen is also one of the hottest young mystery writers around. Pamela Thomas-Graham, who happens to be the first black partner at the world's largest management consulting firm, returns with Blue Blood , the follow-up to her debut effort, the Harvard-set A Darker Shade of Crimson featuring economics professor/super-sleuth Nikki Chase. Read our exclusive interview to learn about the fascinating Pamela Thomas-Graham: novelist, businesswoman, and mother.

barnesandnoble.com: Hi Pamela. Start off by telling us about the real-life incidents that inspiredBlue Blood .

Pamela Thomas-Graham: There was a real-life incident that occurred in 1991 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which many people still probably remember: The wife of a Harvard professor, who was also a professor herself, named Mary Jo Frug, was found on a deserted street in Cambridge, a victim of stab wounds that she later died from. The case has never been solved. It's one of those notorious unsolved incidents where it's never been clear whether her attacker was a stranger or someone who knew her. At the time that it occurred many people said there were so many interesting facets of the case that would have made an interesting novel, and I thought to myself, "Yes, it would be an interesting starting point for a novel."

Around that same time, ironically, there was also a case at Yale — unfortunately, they have had several episodes of students being crime victims — in which a male student named Christian Prince was killedonone of the nicer New Haven streets, actually very near the Yale campus. In this instance, however, they did find the killer and the person was jailed, but it was not inconceivable that such an event could happen at Yale. And then there was a very chilling episode that is still an open investigation right now at Yale: a senior named Suzanne Jovin was killed in December of '98, a case that has some incredible parallels with my book, even though my book was written before it occurred. Suzanne Jovin was found on a street in New Haven and she'd been stabbed — again, it's an open case. One of the people who's been at least named in the press as one of a handful of suspects is a Yale instructor. So there are some unfortunate parallels between that real-life case and my book, which takes place on the Yale campus as well.

bn: Frightening. New Haven has that reputation for being a notoriously tough town.

PTG: Well, it's been a troubled town economically, and because the campus is very close to many of the neighborhoods in the town that have been economically troubled, there is a lot of friction, I think, at times between the Yale community and...the New Haven community.

bn: I attended a college in the Ohio town of Springfield, which was recently voted by one of those publications that rates college towns as one of the worst college towns in the country. Like New Haven, Springfield has experienced quite a few economic setbacks, and my school, Wittenberg University, has had to deal with several instances of violence toward students. In one incident, a good friend of mine was shot in a gang-related crime. To get into the gang, the prospective kid had to attack a Wittenberg student. Crazy. So I can definitely relate to Yale's situation, and to some of the problems that arise in Blue Blood , as well.

PTG: I think after the Christopher Prince episode, the university really did a lot to try to improve safety on campus, and they had a very long stretch where the crime rate was noticeably lower, so I'm sure it's quite disappointing, for lots of reasons.

bn: Let's talk about your character, Nikki Chase. What do the two of you have in common?

PTG: [laughs] Well, we're both young black women. We both work in environments that have traditionally been white male environments: She's trying to become a tenured professor at Harvard and I work as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company; the management consultant industry has traditionally not been a place where there have been a lot of women or minorities. So we both confront continually the issue of what it's like to be young and black and female in an environment where there aren't a lot of people who meet those criteria. That's where the similarities start to end, because she's single and living in Cambridge, and I'm married and a mother and living in New York.

bn: Are there things that Nikki would do that you wouldn't do in a million years?

PTG: [laughing] She's a lot more adventurous than I am. She's probably a lot more reckless in many ways than I am, I think.

bn: You're the first black female partner at the world's largest management consulting company, you've received degrees from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, you're a mother. How did you ever become interested in writing a mystery?

PTG: I'd always wanted to be a writer. I went to Harvard undergrad as well and I was an economics major and, while I've always been interested in economics and business issues, I've always read a lot of fiction and always wanted to be a writer. So I guess I got the itch to start writing about five years ago now, so I wrote my first book, A Darker Shade of Crimson . I decided to write a mystery because I love reading mysteries, and I particularly love reading mysteries about women written by women, so I'm a big fan of Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, and Valerie Wilson Wesley, and I really liked the idea of having a smart feminist detective who is an amateur living her life but gets drawn into some interesting intrigue.

bn: What, in your opinion, makes a good mystery?

PTG: I think a good mystery is one that entertains because it has a compelling plot and setting, but also educates about something that is interesting. I really like reading mysteries that teach me something about a different setting or a different profession. I really like amateur detective stories because they tend to be the kinds of stories that can help you understand what it's like to live in a different place, but also are just entertaining.

bn: Did you enjoy researching Yale? Your first novel, A Darker Shade of Crimson , was of course set at Harvard, which you attended. How was the experience different the second time around?

PTG: The writing experience was different for the second book, but it was a lot of fun. I basically spent one whole autumn going up to New Haven on the weekends and kind of poking around. It did make me feel a bit more like Nikki [begins to laugh] to be in a different environment and to be getting acclimated, looking for what's interesting, keeping my eyes open for interesting settings and interesting quirks about the school, and poking around in different buildings. It was a good diversion.

bn: Not that I attended Yale, but it seems that you did an excellent job at nailing down the lingo and other interesting quirks about the school. That couldn't have been easy.

PTG: I'm lucky that I do have a lot of friends who went there for college and who were generous in talking to me about their experiences, and also getting me into places: There's this place called Mory's, which I write about in the book, that you can only get into if you are a member. So I had the assistance of some Yale alums to get me into some of the more interesting places.

bn: Did you see a difference between the attitudes of Yale alums and Harvard alums? Is there a certain snobbery that's consistent?

PTG: [laughs] Well, it's interesting; I think there's a very friendly rivalry between the two schools and, even though a lot of us end up in similar places after we finish school, there still is a kind of friendly teasing about which one is better for different things. I think there probably are more similarities than differences.

bn: My father attended Princeton, and every five years or so we all make the trip for the enormous reunion bashes they put on. And there, people speak like Princeton is God's own.

PTG: My husband actually went to Princeton. Those P-rades are amazing. It's interesting — my third book is going to be set at Princeton. So I've started doing the research for it and, as much as there are clear similarities, usually the Ivy League schools really do have their own unique personality. But Princeton, in particular, has a very, very strong sense of camaraderie, and the loyalty that Princeton graduates have to the school really exceeds anything I've seen. And since my husband went there, I have a lot of insight into what's it like to be there, so I think it's going to be fun.

bn: Several times in Blue Blood , you deal with the issue of affirmative action. How has affirmative action changed our society? And how do you see affirmative action evolving in the next century?

PTG: I personally support affirmative action. I personally believe that it is important for people to start at a level playing field, and I do believe that people underestimate the amount of racial bias that still exists in our culture today — I think it's much more subtle but I do believe that it still exists, and I try to illustrate that in some ways in both of my books. So, my personal view is that it is an important tool among other tools to try to level the playing field and create a truly equal society.

Having said that, clearly there are issues of fairness that need to be balanced. I think that affirmative action as it exists today is going to continue to evolve, and I think it will evolve in ways that move away from numerical measurements, and probably evolve more toward qualitative assessments and things like college admissions. It may even expand to include economic status as well as racial status, because you can certainly make the argument that as more African-Americans and Latinos move into higher economic groups, class, as well as race, is going to be important to take into account. So it wouldn't surprise me if over time economic conditions become a part of that equation. But I do think affirmative action is quite important, and I think that we would be kidding ourselves if we said that a lot of the advances that we have seen with blacks becoming more viable players at the highest levels of corporate America were not a result of affirmative action. I don't think that would have happened if we hadn't had it, because I think the whole affirmative action debate has opened a lot of people's eyes and has made it something that people feel that they must think through as they consider how they manage and how they promote, and I just think that's really important.

bn: How about racism in America today — do you feel that, with events such as the Rodney King affair and the O. J. Simpson trial, that more negative feelings exist now than ten years ago?

PTG: I think the dialogue has gotten more venomous, which is a shame. On both the left and the right, there are voices that are not looking for constructive solutions, they're just looking for a microphone. And so, I think, unfortunately, people of good will are not necessarily always the ones who are front and center when we have these debates about race. I illustrate this a bit in my book Blue Blood : There's this black activist minister who is perceived as using this racial tragedy for his own end and, similarly, there are people in the white community who are very quick to assume that if there's a black suspect, then that person has to be guilty, and so why are we talking about this any more? And clearly, the truth is somewhere in between those two things, but it's complicated. So one of the themes that runs through this book is that whenever there is a crime and race is an element, what gets lost in all the shouting is what is real justice and what is the real truth, and who's really looking for the truth and who's just looking for an opportunity to grandstand.

bn: Tell us a little bit about the plot of Blue Blood .

PTG: Well, Nikki Chase, a 30-year-old Harvard professor, gets a phone call in the middle of the night from one of her best friends, who happens to be a Yale dean, who has just learned that his wife has been found dead on a deserted street in New Haven. Nikki's friend and his wife are both white, and the wife is found in a poor black neighborhood. Complicating issues is that the woman who's dead is a pretty outspoken conservative commentator and was controversial in her own right before she was killed. Because she was found in a black neighborhood, there's a lot of pressure to find a suspect quickly, and attention quickly turns to a black student of the deceased. And so there are lots of layers of race and politics and gender that come into play, and Nikki is drawn to New Haven to try to help her friend, but she quickly gets drawn into the investigation because she's interested in all of these things, and so natural curiosity just pushes her to get more involved. Nikki's in a bit of a unique situation because, since she has these impeccable academic credentials, she can move pretty freely among the Yale faculty members, but at the same time, because she's black, she can actually insert herself into the black community there. And so she has this unique vantage point, and that's what allows her to solve the mystery in the end.

bn: And you mentioned that Nikki's next mystery will be set at Princeton. Do you have a title yet?

PTG: The working title is Burnt Orange [laughs], but we'll see what I come up with. The basic outline: There's a faculty member at Princeton who's in the Afro-American Studies department who ends up dead, and it turns out that his death occurred on the eve of his joining the Harvard Afro-American Studies department.

bn: So that's how Nikki gets involved.

PTG: That's how she gets drawn into it.

bn: Pamela, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. I truly enjoyedBlue Blood , and look forward to further Nikki Chase adventures.

PTG: Oh, well thank you. This was really fun.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When the body of blond, blue-eyed Amanda Fox, a controversial Yale Law School Professor, is discovered on a deserted street in black inner-city New Haven with multiple stab wounds - and a missing left hand - thirty-year-old Harvard Economics Professor Nikki Chase rushes to the campus to comfort the dead woman's husband, her old friend and mentor Gary Fox. But when he becomes a suspect in the murder, Nikki finds herself turning detective again. When the police arrest and charge Marcellus Tyler, a black Yale sophomore and football star, who was the last person to have seen Amanda alive, Nikki resists the temptation to relax her investigation of the murder. She recognizes the possibilities of Tyler's guilt - he does admit to an attraction to the murdered professor - but she also suspects a rush to judgment on the part of the New Haven police. Further complicating the scenario is the reaction Tyler's arrest draws from the city's black community, as the Reverend Leroy Saunders, a local black minister, seizes the opportunity to gain the spotlight. Soon all of New Haven becomes polarized along racial lines. Moving among professors, student leaders, blue-blooded alumni and black activists, Nikki is drawn into a web of adultery, greed, and racial strife in the Gothic dormitories of Yale and the mean streets of New Haven. It takes the full complement of her trademark tenacity - along with some help from her friends back at Harvard - to uncover the deadly secrets hidden behind Yale's ivied facade.

FROM THE CRITICS

School Library Journal

YA-Harvard economics professor Nikki Chase is awakened by a four a.m. phone call from her friend Gary Fox, a dean at Yale University, with the news that his controversial, conservative wife Amanda has been found murdered on the streets of New Haven. Nikki rushes to support Gary only to discover that he is one of the suspects. Nikki also uncovers a maze of relationships that Amanda had with a minister, a student, a multimillionaire benefactor, and a professor-any of whom could have been her killer. Life at an Ivy League university, with its behind-the-scenes politics, internal squabbles, and academic infighting, forms the backdrop for this mystery. Nikki is a smart black woman who forges friendships with policemen, ministers, professors, and students. This is the second in a series that has appeal for mystery lovers, Ivy League wanna-bes, or those who like a good story with a hint of romance.-Pam Spencer, Young Adult Literature Specialist, Virginia Beach, VA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Ellery Queen

Along with an enthralling whodunit plot, the novel offers a nice sense of Yale.

Kirkus Reviews

What could lure economics professor Nikki Chase (A Darker Shade of Crimson, 1998) out of Cambridge to gray, dangerous little New Haven? Only the murder of her old friend Garrett Fox's wife Amanda—"The Neutron Blonde," a law professor who would say anything to curry favor with the right wing and get the attention of the press. Amanda's been found a few blocks, and a world, away from the Yale campus near the Resurrection Tabernacle Deliverance Church. Since one of her students, black football star Marcellus Tyler, admits staying after her last night class to talk to her, the police are about to lock him up. But Nikki, who doesn't believe the shortest distance between crime and punishment is one of those ubiquitous young black men who just happens to fit the description that's always given—this time by Gary Fox's acolyte Giselle (née Jane) Storrs—goes to work on Marcellus's behalf, concentrating on a pair of redneck donors to Mother Yale who plan to endow a chair in Amanda's honor, and a pair of Resurrection Tabernacle ministers who know more than they're saying about the unexpected ties Amanda had to their church. Thomas-Graham has a nice eye for every arresting location in the Yale environs, but her mystery this time is little more than a collection of ill-developed hints, one of which happens to pay off. Like so many other Harvard alums, she returns from Yale empty-handed.