Customer Reviews

Five Star First Edition Mystery - At Risk of Being a Fool

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In Salem, Oregon, while taking care of her spouse's increasing memory loss in which he does not remember her, fifty-eight years old retired teacher Jeanie McCoy also works part-time as an instructor at an at-risk youth program. Her current class consists of six students, ages seventeen to twenty-one, preparing for the GED exam.

Jeanie knows to keep her distance as her students are violent, but in spite of the fact that anyone would knife her for touching their boom box she cares for each one of them like a mother hen. When a pipe bomb at a Delancey Brothers Construction site injures supervisor Bryce Logan, the cops suspect one of Jeanie's pupils Quinto the artist, who works there. Unable to ignore the situation, Jeanie with the help of another student Sorrel, the amazon mother of an infant, begins investigating what happened and soon realizes one of her dangerous "cubs" could be the culprit.

Where Jeanie found the time to nurture her ailing spouse, teach her rowdy students, and become involved in an investigation is hard to fathom even if she leaves no time for herself. AT RISK OF BEING A FOOL is a fine amateur sleuth mystery complex, mesmerizing and entertaining. The mystery comes in late and takes a back seat to the classroom drama in which each student has a unique personality as discerned by Jeanie. The who-done-it is fascinating, but the classroom rules.

Harriet Klausner

Jeanie McCoy has taken a job teaching troubled kids so she can be near her ailing husband who is now confined to a nursing home. Although, she's been told not to get personally involved, she does so and adds to the load of worries that burden her heart.

The variety of backgrounds and troubles the six near adult students have known will touch the reader as they do Jeanie. They seem to be as real as people you'd meet on the street. Problems continue to follow the six even as they are trying to fix their lives and regain their freedom. Someone is setting off pipe bombs that injure people and kill too. The police have connected the bombs to Jeanie's students, but she proves they couldn't have done it.

While she is living with her own pain and trying to help her students, the six are each experiencing their own private agonies and secrets. Girls want to get back to their babies, a boy wants to be an artist, one loves working on motors, and another boy is struggling with keeping his temper in check. Could one of them be the bomber despite alibis?

The realities of these people will leave you sharing their tragedies, feeling as if you've walked a distance in their shoes. Their stories could come from the papers instead of the imagination of the talented author, Jeannette Cottrell. Recommended as an experience you won't soon forget. People you will long remember. I know I will.