Raphael, Lev

Hot Rocks: A Nick Hoffman Mystery (Nick Hoffman Mysteries)

When Professor Nick Hoffman and his partner Stefan return from a Caribbean vacation, Nick decides it's time to get back in shape at Michigan Muscle, a luxurious health club near the State University of Michigan. But every palace has its intrigue, and when Nick finds a dead trainer in the steam room, he's drawn into a web of passion and privilege like nothing he's experienced before. The prime suspect because he discovered the body, his academic and personal lives take unanticipated turns, and he gets a real workout in the bittersweet denouement.

Tropic of Murder: A Nick Hoffman Mystery (Nick Hoffman Mysteries)

It's winter, but academic madness is in full bloom at the State University of Michigan. Untenured English professor Nick Hoffman is trying to keep out of the line of fire as three senior professors battle to be department chair--all of whom hate each other and demand Nick's support. The situation implodes when an emergency meeting turns the department, and normal academic procedure, upside down. In an intense atmosphere of mounting crisis, Nick and his colleagues lose rights and autonomy, and he is desperate for a quick getaway. Nick's partner, Stefan, suggests an idyllic week at a Caribbean Club Med. The island of Serenity, however, proves to be anything but serene. Once again, Edith Wharton scholar Nick Hoffman, who grew up in New York City without even being mugged, finds himself face-to-face with murder. His winter vacation in paradise becomes a nightmare as he learns the truth of the warning that You can run, but you can't hide. And on a tiny island, there's nowhere even to run...

The Edith Wharton Murders: A Nick Hoffman Mystery

Whoever said that the pen was mightier than the sword might have had The Edith Wharton Murders in mind. In this campus mystery by the talented Lev Raphael, a conference on Edith Wharton becomes a killing ground when various literary factions carry their war of words a little too far--and someone ends up dead. At the heart of both the hostilities and the mystery is Nick Hoffman, a Wharton bibliographer saddled with the thankless task of moderating the conference. Once the murder has occurred, Nick must switch his focus from panel discussions to investigation, a course of action that provides plenty of opportunities for author Raphael to skewer the academic world he left behind.

The Death of a Constant Lover: A Nick Hoffman Mystery (Nick Hoffman Mysteries)

Studying at the (fictional) State University of Michigan can be murder--at least in Lev Raphael's brittle, bright, and brash books about Nick Hoffman.

Hoffman teaches in the university's EAR (English, American Studies, Rhetoric) department and is very popular with his students. However, he has just turned 40 and is seriously worried about getting tenure. Also, his supervisors tend to view him as an under-published scholar, and, with some justification, a walking crime zone. The truth is that Nick attracts murder like a magnet. This time out, a student named Jesse Benevento--son of a history professor--is stabbed to death before Nick's very eyes during a campus riot. Nick and his novelist lover, Stefan Borowski, are sucked into a case that turns even uglier when a second murder occurs. As Nick struggles to solve the murders, his colleagues whine and bicker, a graduate student stalks him, and more violence erupts on campus.

If you like the way Raphael puts the camp into campus, his two previous titles, The Edith Wharton Murders and Let's Get Criminal, are both available in paperback. --Dick Adler

Little Miss Evil: A Nick Hoffman Mystery

Nick Hoffman, the crime-solving Edith Wharton scholar who's starred in three previous mysteries by Lev Raphael, still doesn't have tenure. His boyfriend Stefan's position in the English department at the State University of Michigan is a little more secure, but Stefan's career as a novelist is stalled in traffic, and the appointment of the gratuitously nasty Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Camille Cypriani--"a cross between Anita Brookner and Judith Krantz"--to a newly endowed chair in the department isn't doing much for their relationship. But that may also have something to do with the strange attraction that Nick, who's never been sexually interested in women, suddenly feels for Juno Dromgoole, the outsized and outrageous professor who's counting on his support in her quest for chairmanship of the department.

The English and Rhetoric faculty are already in an uproar over downgrades in status and pay, and on the heels of Camille's controversial appointment, a rumor that a new department of "White Studies" is in the offing sweeps the campus, further highlighting the intense rivalries and petty politics of the university. Then Camille is strangled with a leopard-print scarf that looks suspiciously like Juno's, and Nick's own life is threatened. It falls to Nick's cousin Sharon, a plucky woman whose problems are a lot graver than academic infighting, to point him in the right direction and wrap up the somewhat muddled plot.

Raphael is fast with the wisecracks and heavy with the references to pop culture. He's clearly spent a lot of time watching slasher movies and reading suspense thrillers, which fits neatly with the oversubscribed class Nick teaches on the mystery novel but detracts from the narrative's pacing. It may be time for Raphael to take Nick out of the ivied halls and put his smarts to work in another setting. But if murder in the groves of academe is your thing, consider Little Miss Evil as an extra credit assignment. --Jane Adams

Raphael writes with ease and obvious joy, raising a flag to the Zeitgeist with gleeful abandon. His pacing hums along brilliantly while his descriptions never lack for flavor.... A convivial read, Little Miss Evil doesn't require a high degree of sleuthing capabilities on the part of the reader. It's loaded with spry, humorous characterizations and biting side comments, and Raphael's gift for detail is both astounding and useful.

Let's Get Criminal: An Academic Mystery

Burning Down the House: A Nick Hoffman Novel (Nick Hoffman Mysteries)

Nick Hoffman's State University of Michigan is a place where the Borgias and the Marx Brothers would be equally at home. Heading into the Christmas season, SUM is being torn apart by bizarre attempts to make it more diverse while an autocratic new provost pushes for a White Studies program and Nick faces not only a tenure battle but conflicting requests for support in a battle for department chair.

With his professional life a mix of seasonal chaos and departmental warfare, Nick discovers that he's not only attracted to the outrageously sexy Juno Dromgoole and disturbed by these disorienting new feelings in his life, but also the target, along with Juno, of a vicious harassment campaign that escalates into stalking, assault, and attempted murder. There's certainly no shortage of suspects, only solid clues. The decisions Nick faces may change his life forever...if he survives.

The German Money

"Lev Raphael is a daring writer-one who will not be -restrained by genre, but who tells his story with all the tools at his command. The German Money combines all of Raphael's estimable talents, delivering an emotional thriller about a totally believable contemporary family coming to terms with fifty years of silence."-Edmund White

Best known for Dancing on Tisha B'Av, the groundbreaking story collection exploring the lives of children of Holocaust survivors, Lev Raphael is also the author of five popular mysteries. Now he combines his talents in a story of emotional suspense.

Paul has spent his life running-from New York, the city of his birth; from his beautiful beshert; from contact with his own siblings; but mostly from his mother, a Holocaust survivor of inexplicable coldness. Upon her mysterious death, the children face shocking questions. What caused her to die? Why did she divide their inheritance so that Paul, the least favorite son, was singled out to receive the most, the dreaded "German money,"a bequest of a million dollars accrued from German reparations to survivors . . . a gift as cynical as it is generous.

"Lev Raphael's new novel is a powerful, haunting and erotic tale. The stunning narrative builds to a shocking -denouement and kept me turning pages faster and faster to learn the truth."-Linda Fairstein

Lev Raphael is the author of thirteen books and known internationally as an insightful chronicler of the lives of the children of Holocaust survivors. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award, among many prizes, his short works have appeared in two dozen anthologies, including American Jewish Fiction: A Century of Stories. He is a book critic for National Public Radio and mysteries columnist for the Detroit Free Press.