PHYSICAL EDUCATION

English Professor Alison Bergeron (Third Degree, 2010, etc.) gets stuck with another crap assignment when St. Thomas’ basketball coach buys it during a game.

Already in her boss’s crosshairs for embarrassing the university by repeatedly stumbling across dead bodies, Alison is St. Thomas’ go-to gal for jobs nobody wants. In addition to teaching a bazillion sections of freshman composition, she’s served time at a local soup kitchen (Quick Study, 2008) and as interim residence hall director (Final Exam, 2009). Now Sister Mary is seeing red just because Paul, the campus mailman, has been found dead in the trunk of Alison’s car. So when Michael Kovacs, coach of the women’s basketball team, dies of a heart attack during a particularly dismal game, who better to take the helm of the Blue Jays than five-foot-ten Alison, who played for St. Thomas as an undergrad? The silver lining is that coaching brings Alison closer to her stepdaughter Meaghan, the taller and gentler of her detective husband Crawford’s twins. (A good thing, since petite, prickly Erin hates her dad’s new wife.) The cloud is that the Blue Jays suck. Even with the help of best friend Max Rayfield’s husband, former All-City star Fred Wyatt, Alison can’t buy a win. Not even high scorer Kristy Bianco can propel her team to victory, especially after her father is beaten senseless in an apparent robbery. But Alison suspects that the attack on Lou Bianco wasn’t a random act of violence, and worse, that it may have something to do with her friend Father Kevin McManus’ banishment as St. Thomas’ chaplain. Connecting the dots is made harder by the double distractions of her coaching duties and Crawford’s strange new remoteness. But Alison doesn’t leave the job half done—no matter how many extra jobs she picks up.