Third Degree

October 11, 2010
Barbieri's fizzy fifth mystery featuring English professor Alison Bergeron (after 2009's Final Exam) rates well more than a passing grade. At a Westchester County coffee shop near the college where she teaches, Alison bumps into a fistfight between troublemaking blogger Carter Wilmott and his arch enemy, George Miller. The police burst onto the scene just as George hits Carter in the head, knocking him to the floor. A cop administers CPR to no avail. Alison and her NYPD detective boyfriend, Bobby Crawford, believe it's a slam-dunk case of manslaughter, until disturbing events persuade them otherwise. If George's blow didn't kill Carter, some arsenic in his body might have. Meanwhile, Alison has to worry about the threatening notes she starts to receive and the disappearance of her school chaplain friend, Fr. Kevin McManus. Some punchy plot twists catapult the action to a satisfying reveal.

October 15, 2010

A professor stumbles on yet another dead body while wondering whether to get married.

August certainly is the cruelest month for Alison Bergeron (Final Exam, 2009, etc.). Haunted by memories of her mother's death, she drags herself back to her office at St. Thomas University to interview prospective English majors whose grasp of the language is even more tenuous than her own. (In addition to using the now-ubiquitous "comprised of" and substituting "prone" for "supine," she notes that her best friend "found my screaming to be a serious affront to her delicate olfactory function.") Her closest colleague, Father Kevin McManus, is missing in action. And when she goes to get a cup of dreadful coffee from Beans, Beans—Dobbs Ferry's answer to Starbucks—she steps into a fistfight between blogger Carter Wilmott and George Miller, head of the village's Department of Public Works. One punch from the burly trash man wipes Wilmott off the Web for good, and the cause of death seems so obvious that the police don't even bother investigating the bomb that incinerates Wilmott's car minutes after his demise. Ginny, Miller's wife, begs Alison to lie about the fatal blow, but Alison, a veteran corpse-magnet, decides to investigate instead, seeking any distraction that can prevent her from giving her gorgeous, attentive boyfriend, the NYPD's Bobby Crawford, a straight answer to his marriage proposal.

The only mystery in Barbieri's fifth is why Alison keeps drinking coffee she hates but can't commit to the man she loves.

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