Life at Copper University in Michigan's Upper Peninsula has been good for Professor of Victorian literature Maddie Temple, but the school year is about to get off to a deadly start. Maddie's first day of school is marred by the death of a student who fell from the library's upper floors. First on the scene, she discovers that the student, Cheryl Crawford, was an English major. Meanwhile, Flo Andrews, the ambitious English Coordinator, makes the rest of the department's life hell with petty demands. The university has other problems as well: the elderly Chairman, Malcolm Driscoll, is incensed at the huge amounts of money channeled into SWINC, the new complex for the handicapped, when the rest of the university is pinching pennies. When Malcolm fails to arrive at school one morning, Maddie finds him at home in bed, blind and paralyzed. Although she summons help, he dies the next morning. Flo is arrested, having left prints on a wine glass at Malcolm's the night before. Traces of hemlock were found in his blood, and with her lust for his job, she seems a likely suspect. Maddie takes over the chairmanship temporarily, but when it is learned that Malcolm has left his fortune to SWINC, suspicions begin to rise. Did the managers of the center, furious about his lobbying, have a role in his murder? Is Flo involved as well? And what's with Grace Lwasa, Cheryl's former advisor, and the mysterious phone calls she keeps getting? Maddie turns amateur detective to figure out who is behind the strange happenings at Copper University, and uncover a killer - before she learns just how murderous a little learning can be.
Lou Allin is the author of the Belle Palmer amateur sleuth series set in Northern Ontario in Sudbury, the Nickel Capital. She did her doctoral dissertation on Tamburlaine and currently teaches criminal justice students at Cambrian College. With her GSD, Nikon, and her mini-poodle, Friday, she roams the bush searching for plots. (20050201)
