Quick Study (Murder 101 Series #3) » (First Edition)

Maggie Barbieri, author of the Murder 101 series, is a freelance textbook editor as well as a mystery novelist. Her father was a member of the New York Police Department, and his stories provide much of the background for her mysteries. This is her third novel. She lives in Westchester County, New York.

For professional academic and amateur sleuth Alison Bergeron, staying out of trouble is never on the syllabus…

She thought that dating a good-looking cop would be exciting and involve lots of riding around in cruisers and putting away sleazy crooks. So why hasn’t NYPD officer Bobby Crawford ever invited English professor Alison on any high-speed car chases or stakeouts?

“Series Grade: A.”—Susan McBride, author of the Debutante Dropout series

Life on the sleepy college campus just north of Manhattan may not have changed all that much with Alison’s new romance. But things are about to heat up when an man named Hernan Escalante asks Alison for a favor: Can she help locate his nephew, an illegal Ecuadorian immigrant named Jose, who has mysteriously gone missing? Always up for a challenge, Alison agrees to help Hernan—and begins her investigation by asking Bobby for some expert advice. Turns out Bobby already knows about what happened to Jose, since he’s the one who pulled his corpse out of the Hudson River a few days earlier. With this case, it seems Alison’s still got a lot to learn…

“MYSTERY, ROMANCE, AND HUMOR BLEND SEAMLESSLY…REMINISCENT OF [JANET EVANOVICH’S] PLUM SERIES, THIS IS NOT TO BE MISSED.”—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

Publishers Weekly

In Barbieri's witty third cozy to feature English professor Alison Bergeron (after 2007's Extracurricular Activities), Alison befriends Hernan Escalante and his extended family from Ecuador at the soup kitchen where she's doing community service north of New York City. When the beaten body of Jose Tomasso, one of Hernan's relatives and an illegal immigrant, surfaces in the Hudson near Riviera Pointe, a luxury condo development in the Bronx where Jose was a construction worker, Alison offers to help Hernan find out what happened. After a second murder at Riviera Pointe, Hernan disappears. Alison's investigation leads her and her sidekicks, including her faithful canine companion, Trixie, into all sorts of nail-biting danger. An offer of assistance from former sweetie Jack McManus, marketing director for the New York Rangers, tests Alison's relationship with her main squeeze, NYPD detective Bobby Crawford. Barbieri scores again with this high-octane blend of romance, laughs and chills. (Dec.)

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