Missing In Action: Donna Tartt's Secret History Detour May 1999

Donna Tartt doesn't have time to talk. She's too busy writing. But where's the evidence? It's been seven years since her first novel, The Secret History, became one of those rare best-sellers that actually has literary merit - and nought but a couple of flaccid short stories have dribbled out since. Her cautionary tale of highbrow murder set in the dead of winter against the thinly disguised backdrop of Vermont's exclusive Bennington College (where Tartt is an alum), charmed crusty book critics, while drawing in the John Grisham set. Since then, though, the author seems to have fallen off the literary map.