DEATH MAKES THE CUT
by Janice Hamrick
A dedicated teacher returns to class and murder.
On the first day of school, Jocelyn Shore hears shouting from the room of her mentor, Fred Argus. Mr. Richards, the father of one of Fred’s tennis players, is expressing his unhappiness loudly and profanely. When Jocelyn arrives the next day to find Fred dead in the tennis shed, the sleuthing instincts she developed in another brush with murder (Death on Tour, 2011) take over. On the case is handsome Austin Police Detective Colin Gallagher, who Jocelyn’s look-alike cousin Kyla insists has taken a shine to Jocelyn. The strain on Jocelyn’s long-distance relationship with Dallas travel agent Alan Stratton, who’s never delivered on his promise to move to Austin, makes her receptive to Gallagher’s overtures. But she’s furious when the discovery of marijuana in the tennis shed leads Gallagher to suspect Fred of dealing. Jocelyn’s appointment as temporary tennis coach earns her the enmity of Mr. Richards and another teacher who wanted the job. And her snooping pits her against the drama teacher and the woman who handles all the money for school activities. Soon enough, Jocelyn is attacked in a nearby park while her tennis team act as extras in a movie, and her best friend on the teaching staff is murdered. Naturally, all this drama only makes her more determined to track the killer.
The cast of characters provides both pleasant entertainment and enough suspects to yield a challenging mystery.