The Independent, Oct. 10, 2006 (Lisette Davies Ward)

Murder, Sex, and Intrigue: Don't let Maria Marotti's petite stature fool you. At 5'1", this redheaded Roman packs a powerful punch in her debut novel, A Question Of Class. Hailing from the University of Venice as an undergraduate, Fulbright scholar Marotti earned her doctorate in American literature at UCSB and started teaching at her alma mater's Italian department in 1987. Now retired, with a long list of publications to her name -- including book translations, articles, and short stories -- Marotti recently decided to pen her experiences within the UC system, drawing attention to what she calls "the unspoken class system of the academic world." In A Question Of Class, Marotti aims to evoke "an atmosphere of intrigue and injustices, humiliations, absurdities, and prejudice. The world of academia," she claimed, "may only have an equivalent in some monastic orders."

The fictional academic world of Marotti's murder mystery is certainly rife with shrouded secrets, sexual drama, and power plays. The story takes place in Santa Abelina, a setting inspired by the idyllic California coast, particularly Santa Barbara, where Marotti has lived for 30 years. The novel opens with a scandalous scene: Les Vessely, the married dean of academic affairs at Santa Abelina University, is lunching with his secretary Abigail in his private offices. Abigail obligingly serves him prosciutto, her bottom acting as buffet table for this appetizer before the main indulgence.

The plot thickens when the department's office manager enters the building one morning and stumbles upon Vessely's body. The innocent Franca De Giusti, a European studies lecturer, is framed for his murder -- it is her bike chain that is found draped around the victim's neck. A New York transplant detective is assigned the case. As evidence stacks against Franca, she remains honest, just, and deserving of the promotion she was due to receive shortly before Vessely's demise -- a promotion professors in the department had vigorously opposed, though Franca had recently published an outstanding piece of scholarship.

Determined to vindicate her unjustly accused friend, Franca's colleague, the aptly named Valentina Snupia, snoops around town in an amateur attempt to find the murderer. In the process, Valentina falls in love with the official sleuth, Nick Fusco. As detective Fusco works to uncover "strange professional practices" in order to rule out Franca as a suspect, one academic explains that remaining a lecturer for more than two years "carries such a stigma" that it prevents lecturers from advancing to professional ranks, no matter how competent, published, or ambitious. How can Franca overcome both the entrenched injustices of the academic system and the misplaced charge of murder?

Pure, delicious suspense fills the final pages of the novel as the mystery, and the constraints that bind its heroine, unravel.