Death in a Tenured Position, winner of the Nero Award, is a mystery novel that is part of the Kate Fansler series written by Carolyn Gold Heilbrun under the pen name Amanda Cross.
Through multiple twists and turns, Kate is able to find the shocking truth to what happened to Janet.
While there, Kate encounters her old friend Moon Mandelbaum, Janet's ex-husband, and meets other professors in the English Department.
One day while Kate is in her office, she receives a phone call from Professor Clarkville (another member of the English department).
Moon reveals that he did have possession of cyanide long ago, but tells Kate that it is locked away in a safe back in Minneapolis.
Clarkville explains that he had originally found Janet in the chairman's office dead and decided to move her to a restroom (the men's room was the closest) and reported finding her there.
Kate finally proposes to Moon's lawyer, John Cunningham, that Janet's death was a suicide over a dinner at the Locke-Ober restaurant.
Carolyn Gold Heilbrun herself was a professor in the English department at Columbia and she says that she experienced many instances of discrimination during her career.
The review in The Boston Phoenix called the novel "a non-polemical attack on academia that is written with wit and style.