Set at Oklahoma’s Pursley University (aka PU), Gibson’s entertaining mystery debut introduces psychology professor Ronnie Raven, who’s half-Cherokee and half-Irish. When Ronnie storms into the office of a most unlikable colleague, Weldon Crutchfield, to yell at him, she finds Crutchfield dead in his chair with a bullet wound in his chest. One unpleasant cop, Detective Melvin, immediately pegs Ronnie as the guilty party, but there are plenty of other possible perps at PU, and Ronnie means to get to the bottom of things with help from some suspiciously nervous students and her best friend, drama professor Terry Panetta, not to mention a campus cop, Mick LeGrand, who’s interested in more than the crime. Getting in her way are the wary department head, Zachariah Bent, and the assailant who gives Ronnie a concussion. Readers will too easily identify the killer, but cozy fans will appreciate the charm and humor. (June)
An academic cozy about murder. Oklahoma's Pursley University, a quiet school in a small town, may not be all that behavioral psychology professor Ronnie Raven once dreamed of for herself, but it's perfectly good for now--until she finds a Harley-Davidson taking up the whole bike rack. Raven is more annoyed than surprised. Her boorish colleague Dr. Weldon Crutchfield acts as though his status as tenured professor entitles him to a lot of things. But when Raven finds Crutchfield's body in his office, she's more surprised than annoyed. The situation is especially delicate because Detective Melvin suspects that Raven's responsible for the professor's early demise. Melvin's assistant, Lt. LeGrand, who's fairly sure that one of Crutchfield's many sworn enemies is the murderer, tries to help Raven clear her name. Raven has her doubts about LeGrand, whom she quickly dubs Lt. Kiddie Cop, even though he may be her biggest ally. That is, apart from her closest friend and amateur lothario Terry, who encourages Raven to stay on the good side of LeGrand in more ways than one. Gibson creates a mystery as laid-back and mellow as her heroine.
