- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Inc. (30 May 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0771014848
- ISBN-13: 978-0771014840
- Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 15.5 x 2.8 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,480,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Gail Bowen, winner of the 1995 Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel for her last Joanne Kilbourn mystery, A Colder Kind of Death, is back – with her most daring mystery to date.
In the horrifying opening paragraph of A Killing Spring, Reed Gallagher, the head of the School of Journalism at the university where Joanne Kilbourn teaches, is found dead in a seedy rooming house. He is dressed in women’s lingerie, with an electric cord around his neck. Suicide, the police say. A clear case of accidental suicide. But for Joanne, who takes on the thankless task of breaking the news to Gallagher’s wife, this death is just the first in a series of misfortunes that rock her life, both professional and personal.
A few days after Gallagher’s death, the School of Journalism is vandalized – its offices and computers are trashed, and homophobic graffiti are sprayed everywhere. Then an unattractive and unpopular journalism student in Joanne’s politics class stops coming to school after complaining to an unbelieving Joanne that she’s being sexually harassed. Clearly, all is not as well at the university as Joanne had thought. Nor is all well in her love life after the casual racism of a stranger drives a wedge between Joanne and her lover, Inspector Alex Kequahtooway. To make matters worse, Joanne is unceremoniously fired by her best friend from the weekly political panel on Nationtv, which she’s being doing for years.
Badly shaken by these calamities, Joanne struggles to carry cheerfully on. Action, she knows, is better for her than moping. She decides to find out why her student has stopped coming to class, and in doing so, Joanne steps unknowingly into an on-campus world of fear and deceit and murder.
In the horrifying opening paragraph of A Killing Spring, Reed Gallagher, the head of the School of Journalism at the university where Joanne Kilbourn teaches, is found dead in a seedy rooming house. He is dressed in women’s lingerie, with an electric cord around his neck. Suicide, the police say. A clear case of accidental suicide. But for Joanne, who takes on the thankless task of breaking the news to Gallagher’s wife, this death is just the first in a series of misfortunes that rock her life, both professional and personal.
A few days after Gallagher’s death, the School of Journalism is vandalized – its offices and computers are trashed, and homophobic graffiti are sprayed everywhere. Then an unattractive and unpopular journalism student in Joanne’s politics class stops coming to school after complaining to an unbelieving Joanne that she’s being sexually harassed. Clearly, all is not as well at the university as Joanne had thought. Nor is all well in her love life after the casual racism of a stranger drives a wedge between Joanne and her lover, Inspector Alex Kequahtooway. To make matters worse, Joanne is unceremoniously fired by her best friend from the weekly political panel on Nationtv, which she’s being doing for years.
Badly shaken by these calamities, Joanne struggles to carry cheerfully on. Action, she knows, is better for her than moping. She decides to find out why her student has stopped coming to class, and in doing so, Joanne steps unknowingly into an on-campus world of fear and deceit and murder.
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Customer Reviews
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4 reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
This is a very literate mystery, well written & well plotted
30 Oct 2003
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'm very happy to have discovered this Canadian mystery writer. This mystery is part of a series set in Regina, Saskatchewan. Bowen's "detective" is Joanne Kilbourn, a middle-aged widow who is a political science professor at the Univerity of Regina, and who is raising four children (two at home, two grown). Joanne has an on-again, off-again Ojibway police-detective boyfriend. In the course of the mysteries, you also follow the lives of these characters and their relationships.
The plot involves several strands that more or less come together in the end. THe first involves a very unattractive young student who complains that she is being sexually harassed by a popular good-looking student. The second strand involves a professor who has apparently met an accidental death as the result of some perverse activities. The third strand involves vandalism in the university. The fourth strand involves JOanne's best friend's boyfriend -- a complete jerk.
Bowen is an English professor and not surprisingly, she writes with great skill: her mysteries have depth, her characters are vivid, and the plots are well-constructed. She describes people and places so well that I can imagine myself in the setting and talking to her characters.
All in all, there's plenty to keep the reader interested and turning the pages, and it all comes together satisfactorily in the end. For the reader who likes thoughtful, well-written mysteries (in the manner of Elizabeth George or Deborah Crombie), I highly recommend Gail Bowen in general and this mystery in particular.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
a Killing Spring
5 Nov 2000
Format:Mass Market Paperback
A Killing Spring is one in a series featuring Joanne Kilbourn, a Canadian college professor, as the amateur sleuth. There is a nice density to these mysteries: the reader is always aware of Joanne's full life--we see her with her children, her friends, as a political woman (her deceased husband was in politics), as well as with students in and out of the classroom. The mystery itself is good and Joanne's investigation of it quite believable--only at the end does she become improbably active. Gail Bowen is a good writer, and the depth of the mystery and Joanne's life gives the book a rich quality; the final scene is lovely. Joanne does have a romantic relationship with a policeman (as do many female amateur detectives). The policeman is a Native Canadian, and the two must deal with prejudice in this book. Joanne feels she has never before experienced prejudice, an astonishing belief, I thought, for a liberal woman. I highly recommend this mystery.
A new Bowen fan
23 July 2007
Format:Mass Market Paperback
A friend gave me this book when I was visiting and I had never read any of Ms. Bowen's books. A Killing Spring is a great mystery novel. Even though I picked it up in the middle of the series, I got caught up with things quite quickly. Ms. Bowen is a talented writer and she shows she researches her topics well. Set on a university campus, the death of a professor throws Joanna Kilbourne (a fascinating lead character) into the middle of a mystery. I liked this character. She's a down to earth widowed mom with 3 almost different lives--the life of a professor, a mother, and a woman looking for love. The subplots were enjoyable and revealed more of the main character. This is what I personally like to see in a novel-character growth. I am off now to buy book #1 and start from the beginning (which is a bit hard because The Endless Knot looks really good.) A solid mystery and believable characters make for a great read.
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