A Darker Shade of Crimson: An Ivy League Mystery - Hardcover

Kirkus Review, February 15,1998
An impressive first outing introduces Nikki Chase, a young black economics professor at Harvard and a feisty addition to the roster of female amateur sleuths. Nikki has discovered the body of Ella Fisher, the outspoken black dean of students, on a staircase in the Littauer building--this after a meeting of the prestigious Crimson Future Committee, to which both women had been appointed. The police are calling it murder, and Nikki's snooping indeed soon evokes a barrage of suspicions: Was Ella having an affair with the college's newly appointed President Leo Barrett? Where did that leave Barrett's blue-blooded wife Victoria? What is going on between Nikki's mentor Ian McAllister, of the Managment Board, and Comptroller Christian Chung, as the Committee struggles to project the school's finanical needs accurately? Why was Nikki attacked in the stacks of the Widener Library-- her backpack snatched? Who had poisoned her escort Justin Simms at the Fogg Museum Gala, and why? All this, and much more, as Nikki tries to resolve her rocky romance with charismatic Dante Rosario. Answers come slowly, and there are crucial secrets to uncover, before a high-noon standoff brings a surprising denouement.

Despite an oversized, albeit intriguing, cast of players and a needlessly complex network of confrontations and subplots, Thomas-Graham's precisely rendered campus background, vivid characters, easy dialogue, and fluidly entertaining narrative mark a robustly talented new recruit to the genre.

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 the Harvard Law Review. At age 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. A leader of the firm's Media and Entertainment Practice, she advises Fortune 500 companies on a wide variety of strategic issues. Thomas-Graham serves on the boards of directors of the New York City Opera, the American Red Cross of Greater New York, and Girls Incorporated (formerly the Girls Club of America). She has been profiled in a number of leading publications, including Fortune, and was named to the prestigious "40 Under 40" list of fasttrack executives in Crain's New York Business. Originally from Detroit, she divides her time between Manhattan and Westchester County with her husband, Lawrence Otis Graham, a writer and attorney. A Darker Shade of Crimson is her first novel and marks the beginning of her Ivy League mystery series.