Book Review: Murder 101

Title: Mureder 101 

Author: Sophie Michaels

Date: 2023

Publisher: Sophie Michaels

Quote: "Katey was...Fierce because she taught at a high school in one of the worst neighborhoods in Detroit."

So she looks forward to an early retirement in the small town in Maine where she was born. But a gang of vindictive old acquaintances follow her there. When she gave a promising young athlete the failing grade he'd earned, and didn't offer him a chance to take a make-up tet, a half-dozen or more of his criminal connections resolved to make the teacher pay. 

Sigh. In Adult Education it's easy to avoid this situation. A teacher works with students individually, doing classroom meetings when several of them are at the same place, going over difficult points with one or two students at a time. Tests are scheduled when the students are ready to pass them. That's how all but three of my students passed their exams; two were thrown out for cheating on the actual test, by someone else (good!), and I left because I couldn't see any way for the third one to pass her test. And meanwhile a lot of students passed their exams and got the jobs they wanted.

But the high school system is set up to force huge numbers of students through the same process at the same pace, penalizing the ones who are ahead of that mythical "grade level" almost as much as the ones who are behind, and before the students are old enough for Adult Ed. the ones who arelocked out of scholarships or even diplomas have time to kill. Though usually it's the time they want o kill, and not a teacher. 

So here's a novel intended to dramatize the teacher's predicament...I'm not sure why Sophie Michaels chose to name her tough-as-nails heroine after an actress best known for playing an aging bimbo. Just spelling the name Katie, or Katy, or Kate would have made it a traditional name anyone could use, but as only Seagal ever spelled it "Katey" in the real world, Murder 101 sets up a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. Aren't people called "Katey" supposed to say things like "I wrecked our car...but you should've seen how much damage our old clunker did to that brand-new luxury car! It made me proud to be American!" 

Instead of which, Sophie Michaels' Katey calmly reports her prime suspect as the first victim and cheerfully works with the nice guys at the small-town police department to round up the whole gang, all of whom have conveniently, if improbably, followed her to Maine. I think the plot may be a little too big for this short e-book; as Katey and the cozy small-town folk keep catching baddies, the story of how they're all connected to one another just spills out without time for suspense, but most of the suspense consists of wondering which characters will be wounded or killed in their little war with the gang anyway. 

Detective stories always end with at least the main detective ready for more, and this one ends with Katey gearing up to help the big alarming men on the police force track down a missing child. The town is too small to have a "matron" officer for cases like that, so although her official business in town is running a little coffee shop, she fits right in as the nice auntly lady who goes out with the police just to comfort the kid...LOL. Somehow you'l suspect that Katey will end up solving that whole case, too, with the small-town cops staring in admiration of her big-city streetsmarts.