Book review: A Little Class on Murder by Carolyn G. Hart

The thirty-eighth book I read in 2016 was the fifth book in Carolyn G. Hart's Death on Demand series, A Little Class on Murder.  Annie is invited to teach a class on mystery novels at a local college.  In the journalism department.  You know, how establishments of higher education are always asking local business owners to teach classes in subjects they're unqualified in and which don't even fall under the aegis of the department.  Happens all the time.

Inexplicably, some of the rest of the faculty of Chastain College (who, presumably, are trained educators or have experience in the field or are teaching actual journalism classes) are of the opinion that Annie's hiring is a travesty which cheapens their profession, but they are distracted from the ludicrous development when an anonymous source starts to spread their dirty laundry in the campus newspaper.  There is a suicide; the newspaper office is bombed; and the department head is murdered.

Thankfully, there is no Bryce Posey in this book; the heavy is Police Chief Harry Wells, making a repeat appearance from Design for Murder.  Hart does people Annie's class with her favorite eccentrics, Max's mother Laurel and mystery lover/nutcase Henny Brawley, and completes the crazy-older-woman triumvirate with Miss Dora, from the aforementioned Design.

In addition to the laughable situation that turns Annie into a college professor, the book is notable for its appalling portrayal of Emily Everett, an overweight college student and secretary to the head of the journalism department.  Hart writes about her appearance with the same gusto she expends on homes and gardens but with visceral disgust rather than admiration.

"Slowly, an enormous creature, bulbous with fat, wedged sideways through the doorway.  She -- it was a woman, perhaps even a young woman -- was a mass of flesh almost lacking in definition, a bloated moon face atop a swollen body, chest and girth and hips merging into a mountainous whole that moved and swayed within a huge yellow caftan.  She clutched a handful of tissues in bratwurst-sized fingers."

That's frankly a repugnant description that denies the character's humanity -- and Hart clearly enjoys every cruel, fat-shaming syllable of it.

It's things like that which make me not feel bad at all about mocking her about things like Annie's course's name: The Three Grande Dames of the Mystery.  She means, of course, grandes dames, but neither Annie nor Hart knows any better.  I bet she pronounces it "grand dames," too.