Schooled in Murder: A Tom and Scott Mystery (Tom & Scott Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Mark Richard Zubro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2008 | Series: Tom & Scott Mysteries

Tom Mason, Chicago area high school teacher, has been teaching at Grover Cleveland High School for a while - long enough to loathe the faculty meetings and long enough to know that as bad as they are, they aren't fatal. Usually. Having had all he can take of the endless bickering, picking and factional disputes, he sneaks out of the meeting for a short break only to find the meeting over when he returns, the usual suspects having departed to the four winds. Having decided that this was a sign of his good fortune, he decides to see if the stockroom actually has the supplies he needs. What he finds there however is a trysting couple in the dark (one married, the other not) and, once the light is turned on, a dead body in the corner. The body is that of one of his colleagues who stormed out of the faculty meeting earlier, a blackboard eraser stuffed into her lifeless mouth. Having disappeared from the meeting at roughly the same time, Tom finds himself in the unwelcome position of prime suspect and with the help of his husband, former baseball player Scott Carpenter, he'll have to figure out who really killed the other teacher before the crime is pinned on him.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An acrimonious English department faculty meeting at Chicago-area Grover Cleveland High leads to murder in Zubro's intriguing 12th Tom and Scott mystery (after 2006's Everyone's Dead but Us). English teacher Tom Mason's troubles begin after he discovers the corpse of teacher Gracie Eberson, an eraser stuck in her mouth, in a supply room also occupied by two male teachers engaged in a sexual tryst. The guilty pair deny Tom's official report about their illicit activity, and an anonymous tip implicates Tom in Eberson's murder. When the dead body of another teacher turns up behind Tom's car, Tom turns sleuth. Tom's lover, Scott Carpenter, and such friends as Meg Swarthmore, Grover Cleveland's feisty librarian, and police officer Frank Rohde lend support. Zubro, a high school English teacher himself, invests this whodunit with sharp insights into what can happen when prejudice rules as well as timely lessons on educational chicanery. (July)
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From Booklist

Magnificent teachers may be as rare as hen’s teeth, but murdered teachers are a dime a dozen at suburban Chicago’s Grover Cleveland High School, where English teacher and teachers’ union representative Tom Mason is under suspicion for killing two of his more colorful, cantankerous, and corrupt colleagues. As Tom tries to clear his name and find the real killer, he uncovers a school system teeming with scandals—adulterous affairs, high-stakes gambling, covert grade fixing, and insidious extortion—any one of which could have been the motive for murder. The deeper Tom probes into the faculty’s peccadilloes and transgressions, the greater their hostility against him, and their increased opposition quickly shifts Tom from probable suspect to potential victim. Aided, as always, by his husband, former big-league baseball star Scott Carpenter, and some well-placed moles among the administrative staff, Tom brings all the suspects together for a dramatic, and deadly, denouement. The prolific Zubro’s latest installment in his popular series featuring gay partners Tom and Scott shimmers with scintillating insider glimpses of academia run amok. --Carol Haggas

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (July 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312343469
• ISBN-13: 978-0312343460
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,442,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Teachers Behaving Badly, July 16, 2008

By 

Bob Lind "camelwest" (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Schooled in Murder: A Tom and Scott Mystery (Tom & Scott Mysteries) (Hardcover)

This 12th installment in the series about schoolteacher Tom Mason and his partner, retired pro baseball star Scott Carpenter, focuses on Tom's life as an English teacher and union rep at a suburban Illinois high school. With trends in teaching quickly changing, there is a definite division between the "old guard" teachers in the English department, and the newbies fighting for tenure and to have their methods and preferences recognized. By playing favorites and encouraging such strife, the administration of Grover Cleveland High School has allowed this rivalry to escalate into a near war, departmental meetings with teachers shouting out insults at each other, distracting the administrators as well as each other. But when one such meeting ends with two dead bodies found on campus (both found by Tom), it's clear that there may be more going on here than professional rivalry.

The novel can be a bit of an eye-opener to readers not aware of the "old vs new" arguments that are indeed part of the educational process in America, and a shock to find teachers behaving worse than the kids they are supposed to be teaching. When a pattern of lies emerge that implicate Tom as a possible suspect in the murders, he starts an investigation of his own, helped by his few allies in the school willing to risk getting in trouble with the administration, seemingly oblivious at first, but later found to be deeply involved in the scandals that may have triggered the murders. Grade and statistic rigging, teachers cheating on pay for extracurricular activities, bigotry based on ethnic origin and sexual orientation, selling tenure for favors, as well as good old fashioned sexual improprieties surface as possible factors that could have led to the deaths. The police are stumped, and Tom is in the middle of the group of "likely suspects" that increasingly want him out of their way.

Zubro can always be relied upon for a well-written and meticulously crafted mystery novel, and this is very much in that vein. It is a bit more one-dimensional than most in the series, and doesn't really involve Scott except as the stabling and protective influence on Tom. While I can believe the exaggerated internal strife in a high school leading to such events, the police reaction seems less than realistic to me, in this story. But, it is, after all, a work of fiction, and definitely one worth reading. I give it four stars out of five.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Over The Edge, Into the Chasm, August 29, 2008

By 

Robert Schwartz "BOb in Fort Lee" (Fort Lee, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Schooled in Murder: A Tom and Scott Mystery (Tom & Scott Mysteries) (Hardcover)

I've really enjoyed the books in both of Mr. Zubro's series, most of which have attained great heights in mystery writing. But, with great heights come the risk of great falls. This book is awful. There are so many characters, assigned to different sides in an academic internecine battle, that a progam list would have been helpful. They are so full or anger and deceit as to make them ridiculously unreadable. The plot is laden. Now that Zubro's plumbed the depth of quality, one can only look forward to his regaining the high ground.Schooled in Murder: A Tom and Scott Mystery (Tom & Scott Mysteries)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Peyton Place High School, August 24, 2008

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Blue in Washington "Barry Ballow" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Schooled in Murder: A Tom and Scott Mystery (Tom & Scott Mysteries) (Hardcover)

"Schooled in Murder" more or less chronicles a kind of civil war taking place in a suburban Chicago secondary school, with faculty and administration arrayed in two strongly opposing sides in a battle literally to the death over teaching methodologies and overall control of the school. The passion and intensity written into this story by author Mark Zubro suggests that he knows the turf well and is writing as a witness to his own years as a public school teacher.

The novel begins with the book's principal protagonist, gay and out English teacher, Tom Mason, walking out of a fractious faculty meeting and into a supply room tryst between two male teachers and, coincidentally, a murder scene. The early set up of the plot by the author of this scene and the reaction of protagonist Mason were, for me, the highwater marks of the story. From that point forward, the inter-mural warfare in the school is described in such over the top terms that some of the otherwise excellent writing of the book is obscured.

There is so much anger and angst in the story that follows, including a second murder, that logic and the usual "procedural" part of a crime story, disappear almost altogether. Homophobia and lust for power become the overriding motives for every crazy act that follows in the book and ultimately those themes are too exagerrated to bring the story to a credible close.

This was the first Zubro mystery that I've tried and, in hindsight, I wish that I'd chosen another in this critically praised series.