Little Miss Evil: A Nick Hoffman Mystery

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

Lambda Book Report, October 2000
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.

There are enough reviews giving away the plot or criticizing a variation from correct mystery/crime line. Raphael is unconventional, an academic who is suppose to broaden us, so I enjoyed the reading-ride. I openly chuckled on the bus and in a restaurant, and wiped my eyes too with other emotions stirred.

The Nick Hoffman series should have a wide appeal and including anyone connected with academia or those educated higher ups that can enjoy laughing at themselves. I've been recommending Raphael to client's and friends connected with the University of Chicago, as I'm sure not everything is just Ravelstein in Hyde Park.

I like the character's Nick and Stefan, they remind me of people I know; my medical doctor and his boyfriend who recently found out about his own Madeline Albright-esque Jewish roots. These characters set standards for a burgeoning gay community, one that is looking for icons. A community so youth-oriented in an age of steroids and viagra, and that hereto sadly seems to be mostly fodder to hypnotizing Leni Riefenstahl-like advertisements. I prefer broader American Dream icons, even if they are characters in a novel like Stefan and Nick, who aspire for higher plateaus, teaching our young, making a home, and a creating lasting relationships. These two just happen to be even more enlightening for readers as they are also a Jewish couple living in the American Midwest.
Hence, The Nick Hoffman series belongs in every Temple library too.


Pretty decent academic satire   August 27, 2003
Maybe you need to be familiar with the academic world to appreciate Raphael's books. It might also help to have lived in a Midwestern college town. Nevertheless, he gets those realities down pretty well and makes for an entertaining read. Who really cares whether it falls into the category of "mystery" or something else? Kind of on the light side but I think that's the point.


fun, funny academic satire   June 1, 2002
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This week I (finally) read Lev Raphael's LITTLE MISS EVIL (2000), the 4th in
his Nick Hoffman series. If anyone on the [Dorothy-L] list hasn't yet read it: do so,
it's lots of fun, especially if you like send-ups of academe. Like Nick, I'm
an English professor at a state college, so I got a real kick out of the
absurdist drama of academic politics in the midst of which Nick struggles to
figure out who is harassing him and his lover Stefan, who killed an unpopular
colleague, and what the heck is going on with his own unexpected feelings
toward the sexy, brassy, over-the-top Juno.


Wonderful realistic view of academics   December 19, 2000
 7 out of 8 found this review helpful

There is trouble in the State University of Michigan EAR (English, American Studies, and Rhetoric) department and Nick Hoffman, a non-tenured professor who always seems to find himself surrounded by murder, is in the middle of it. Someone is stalking him, everyone is upset about a new endowed chair, and murder is once again in the air.

Using a professor who teaches a class in mystery allows Lev Raphael (the author) to have Nick name-drop all of the latest mystery authors, along with Virginia Wolfe, Edith Warton, Dark Passages, and Titanic with equal humor. I found myself laughing out loud when Nick (after spending too long on Janet Evanovich) wondered if he should simplify his diet (his partner, Stephan set him straight--Stephanie Plum is no role model).

The academic setting is brutally realistic. Unlike business, the University really is a zero sum game and professors play to win--not that there is much joy even in the winning. Still, Nick keeps his sense of humor and deepens his relationships with Stephan, his cousin Sharon, and the strangely attractive Professor Juno Dromgoole (is there a certain Dickensian quality to Raphael's naming?).