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Jul. 31st, 2010 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaMURDER 101 by Maggie Barbieri.
Cover copy: Safely away from the chaos of Manhattan, St. Thomas, a small college on the banks of the Hudson River in the Bronx, is supposed to be tranquil, bucolic, and serene. Unfortunately, English professor Alison Bergeron has found it to be anything but. Recently divorced from a fellow professor and even more recently without a car - it was stolen - she has been hoofing it to school. One Friday evening, two NYPD homicide detectives drop by her office. The good news is that they found her beat-up Volvo: the bad news is that the body of one of the students in her Shakespeare seminar was in the trunk.
Not only are Alison's chances of getting the car back bleak, but suddenly she's the primary suspect on a list that includes, among others, the murdered student's drug-dealing boyfriend, Vince, and the girl's father's business rivals (he's head of an old Italian family...)
Accused of a crime that she didn't commit, Alison enlists her best friend, Max's, emotional support and services as an amateur sleuth. Their fumbling efforts to clear Alison's name could land her in even hotter water with Detective Bobby Crawford, the handsome investigating officer (and former alter boy) - not to mention the nuns at St. Thomas...
Maggie Barbieri's charming professor and down-to-earth detective make an unlikely but loveable team in her delightful debut mystery.
Gender of detective: female
To be absolutely fair: there is one instance of Wacky Hijinx right near the beginning. However, it's only the one, and the heroine is heartily sorry for it pretty much immediately and doesn't do it again. Which is surprising, given the way the cover pitches it, but rather a relief (see review immediately preceding this one).
More to the point, we get a reason why the heroine isn't necessarily acting as intelligent as you'd expect from a college professor, and it's a reason I have personal experience with: her divorce has just become final. Which wouldn't be such an issue, except that she was in denial about the divorce happening at all, which means it's all hitting her at once...yeah, been there, done that, helloooooo junior year in high school!
It does mean that she doesn't follow up on something which I, at least, pegged as Possible Important Clue much earlier than she did. But it also means that I'm a lot more forgiving of the lapse than I might be otherwise.
*
Dear red bucket, why do you not give me the numbers of the books I really really want to do? Are you saving them for the wee hours of the night? Or am I just getting randomizer fail?
Team Mariposa, Blogathon 2010, wherein I am already beginning to lose it. Send help! Send caffeine! Send sponsorship!
Cover copy: Safely away from the chaos of Manhattan, St. Thomas, a small college on the banks of the Hudson River in the Bronx, is supposed to be tranquil, bucolic, and serene. Unfortunately, English professor Alison Bergeron has found it to be anything but. Recently divorced from a fellow professor and even more recently without a car - it was stolen - she has been hoofing it to school. One Friday evening, two NYPD homicide detectives drop by her office. The good news is that they found her beat-up Volvo: the bad news is that the body of one of the students in her Shakespeare seminar was in the trunk.
Not only are Alison's chances of getting the car back bleak, but suddenly she's the primary suspect on a list that includes, among others, the murdered student's drug-dealing boyfriend, Vince, and the girl's father's business rivals (he's head of an old Italian family...)
Accused of a crime that she didn't commit, Alison enlists her best friend, Max's, emotional support and services as an amateur sleuth. Their fumbling efforts to clear Alison's name could land her in even hotter water with Detective Bobby Crawford, the handsome investigating officer (and former alter boy) - not to mention the nuns at St. Thomas...
Maggie Barbieri's charming professor and down-to-earth detective make an unlikely but loveable team in her delightful debut mystery.
Gender of detective: female
To be absolutely fair: there is one instance of Wacky Hijinx right near the beginning. However, it's only the one, and the heroine is heartily sorry for it pretty much immediately and doesn't do it again. Which is surprising, given the way the cover pitches it, but rather a relief (see review immediately preceding this one).
More to the point, we get a reason why the heroine isn't necessarily acting as intelligent as you'd expect from a college professor, and it's a reason I have personal experience with: her divorce has just become final. Which wouldn't be such an issue, except that she was in denial about the divorce happening at all, which means it's all hitting her at once...yeah, been there, done that, helloooooo junior year in high school!
It does mean that she doesn't follow up on something which I, at least, pegged as Possible Important Clue much earlier than she did. But it also means that I'm a lot more forgiving of the lapse than I might be otherwise.
*
Dear red bucket, why do you not give me the numbers of the books I really really want to do? Are you saving them for the wee hours of the night? Or am I just getting randomizer fail?
Team Mariposa, Blogathon 2010, wherein I am already beginning to lose it. Send help! Send caffeine! Send sponsorship!