Poisoned Ivy

Lake's ( Amends for Murder ) engaging campus cop Peggy O'Neill returns to disclose the dark secrets lurking inside the ivory towers of academe when Jeremiah Strauss, unpopular dean of the graduate school, is targeted with death threats. Peggy is one of the cops assigned to attend a banquet honoring Strauss, where a disgruntled young woman named Donna Trask commandeers the podium and bites into the apple that was meant to be a prop for Strauss's speech--and that is laced with cyanide. Peggy's insatiable curiosity leads her to exceed her authority while seeking to find out why someone would try to do in the dean. Her search is spurred on by the arrest of Edith Silberman, a professor whom Peggy had liked as a student and whose grudge against Jeremiah goes back years. It is great fun trailing around with Peggy as she digs up the dirt on deliciously dreadful folks like unscrupulous Strauss; Hudson Bates, the assistant dean who runs Strauss's ``sleazy errands''; and Donald Trask, Donna's father and the university's chief attorney. As for Donna herself, although she bit into the poisoned apple, it becomes clear that she was no Snow White. (Mar.)