 Creamed at Commencement
A Graduation Mystery
Synopsis:
Professor Melanie Andrews, murdered at the
Yonkers University graduation, was a brilliant academic.
She was also a control freak who thought that everyone
else's business was also hers.
Two female amateur
detectives (of different ages but similar mindsets)
solve the crime. Katie Maguire is a 61-year-old,
part-time receptionist in a newly formed detective
agency. She has also recently enrolled as a part-time
college student at Yonkers University. She doesn't have
a lot of formal education; but like the late Professor
Andrews, she is productive, conscientious -- and nosy!
Katie's boss is on vacation when the agency is asked to
work for private clients in Ireland to find the murderer
of the professor. Some might play when the cat's away.
But not Katie. Not when e-mail makes it easy to say
"yes" to long-distance clients. So now Katie faces the
dual challenge of solving a murder and fitting in as a
college student. Her twentysomething classmate, Maria
Pinacchio (fiancé Roberto Rodriguez is a police
detective), proves to be an able assistant.
The detective duo
deals with a number of suspects: the victim's sister,
angry about the disposition of some jointly held
property; a dean who may be sitting on a financial
scandal; a janitor who guards his basement office as if
it were Fort Knox; a young male professor rumored to be
overly friendly with female students; a deaf
administrative assistant who may know more about the
murder than she cares to admit; an ambitious professor
conducting an anti-wrinkle cream experiment that may add
a new wrinkle to the case; a Professor Andrews wannabe
who has a weight-loss plan that may have included
getting rid of her controlling mentor; and a professor
in his eighties who is reticent about the meeting he had
with the victim shortly before her death. The action
takes place at the suburban university campus and also
fifteen miles south at a variety of locations in New
York City: an aerobics studio, a restaurant, an office,
an apartment, and a shopping mall.
Katie and Maria learn
a lot about academic ambition as well as the art and
science of detecting. Oh joy. Nancy Drew fantasies are
realized.
Read an excerpt from "Creamed at
Commencement: A Graduation Mystery"
Click here.
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