THE FIFTH STUDENT

A university cheating scandal leads to murder in Cooper’s thriller.

Penny is having a stellar freshman year at Maine State University until she is accused of cheating on an exam. She swears she is innocent, but the powers that be don’t believe her. She has an ally in Brad Parker, one of her professors—Brad believes Penny is innocent. But he’s up against a recalcitrant dean who is eager to close the case. He has friends in the right places, though, and he gets the university police involved in the investigation. The situation takes a wild turn when one of the students accused of cheating is found dead just before she is scheduled to talk to the police. Her death looks like a suicide but also seems suspicious (“ ‘I’m sorry, Ron,’ Karen said. ‘We’re all fighting this crazy opioid epidemic and there’s nothing sadder than seeing a young person die of an accidental overdose.’ Conway closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘It wasn’t accidental’ ”). Then the professor who accused the students of cheating is found dead, too. The story takes intriguing twists and turns as Brad, his FBI agent girlfriend, Karen Richmond, and the university police try to track down the murderer. A subplot about Brad and Karen possibly finding new jobs and moving to a new place doesn’t seem very compelling at first, but it ends up being tied to the central mystery. Much of the book goes this way—seemingly mundane details end up becoming important later. It stretches the reader’s credulity a bit to accept that the response to being caught cheating could include murder, but there’s a broader mystery at play that the characters uncover by the end of the novel. The details of the academic setting ground the story’s fleet narrative and surprises, and the author does a great job tying the complex plot threads together. This is the sixth book in the Brad Parker and Karen Richmond series, but the novel works well as a stand-alone.

A zippy, tricky academic murder mystery.