With few exceptions, the characters in No Word from Winifred are the least stereotypical of any in the Amanda Cross novels. The novel features, in addition to Kate Fansier, several finely-drawn female characters. Winifred Ashby, as readers learn about her from her diary and the comments of others who have known her, is an intelligent, sensitive, and strong individual whose lack of great physical attractiveness is compensated by her dignity and sense of honor. People are attracted to her, and even to the idea of her, as is Leighton, Kate's niece, who at the end of the novel intends to seek her halfway around the world. Leighton herself is a more fully-developed character than she is in Death in a Tenured Position (1981). Now in her late twenties, she still hopes to become an actress, and is eager, as she puts it, to play Watson to Kate's Sherlock Holmes...