Claire and Present Danger

Amanda Pepper is a high school teacher at Philly Prep in Philadelphia. She is also engaged to C. K. Mackenzie, former homicide cop and now studying to get his PhD in criminology and moonlighting as a PI with Ozzie. Amanda is moonlighting working with Mackenzie. Mackenzie sends her to do an interview. She wants to do a good job on this her first solo investigation. Claire Fairchild doesn't make it easy. She wants Amanda to investigate her future daughter-in-law, Emmie. The problem is that Claire gives Amanda sketchy information about Emmie -- she says that this is why she wants her investigated. Amanda meets Emmie and likes her. Amanda is about to meet her future in-law's and is not sure she wants to investigate Emmie. But there are the anonymous letters Mrs. Fairchild received about Emmie.When Amanda begins probing into Emmie's past, she finds there was a fatal accident that may have been murder. There are more questions about accidents in her past. Then things heat up when more things start happening. Is Emmie behind them or a victim herself? Amanda rushes to find the truth before it is too late.I have enjoyed this series for some time. This is the best one yet as I enjoyed Amanda working with Mackenzie on this case. Yes, he still had his doubts and didn't go along with everything Amanda came up with, but I felt they were on the same side most of the time.I also enjoy Amanda's interaction with her high school students. It is fun getting a glimpse into that side of her life in each book, some more than others.I hope Mackenzie will become more involved in the stories in the future now that he is a PI.The introduction of Mackenzie's parents is very interesting. His mother is a real character.I highly recommend this book. It is a great cozy mystery.

Gillian Roberts takes on a topic of recent nonfiction best-sellers, the long-term effects of teenage cruelty. She finds parallels in her classroom, in the mystery she's hired to solve and in the reading she assigns her teens.This tightly written book deftly weaves together several subplots: Amanda's job at Philly Prep, where she has learned to manage her wimpy headmaster; Amanda's classroom, where she teaches Lord of the Flies with creative, contemporary techniques; Amanda's romance with C.K. Mackenzie and the impending descent of the inlaws; and most important, Amanda's foray into private investigation, under Mackenzie's supervision, which furnishes the main plot driver.Hired to investigate a wealthy man's prospective bride, Emmie, Amanda and C.K. quickly learn the woman has a dark and complex past. Their investigation moves with lightning speed when Amanda coincidentally meets Emmie's old friend, Vicki. When Emmie realizes she has been investigated, she insists there's another side to the story, albeit a rather implausible one. When Amanda finally figures out the real truth, we readers are treated to a delightful scene where we gain a new appreciation for Amanda's future mother-in-law. True, there are some coincidences that move the plot, but the book offers what cozy mystery readers want: a fast read, not too much danger, interesting characters, and some deeper points to ponder. The pace and polish of this book show the author continues to grow and move her skills to the next level. I hope Amanda's marriage doesn't slow her down. And while I enjoyed the classroom scenes, I can't help wishing Amanda would find a more fulfilling, better-paying career. She's too smart to toil in underpaid anonymity under the supervision of an incompetent Headmaster Havemeyer.

High school English teacher Amanda Pepper has her hands full with the new school year and planning for her first meeting with her prospective inlaws. Still, a high school teacher planning on getting married needs some extra money and Amanda is flattered to get her first independent job at the private detective agency where she works. The task should be straightforward--do an identity and background check on a woman for her prospective mother-in-law. Except who has been sending those nasty notes to the mother-in-law? And what should Amanda do when the mother-in-law turns up dead? Author Gillan Roberts creates a memorable character in Amanda Pepper. Her worries about the upcoming in-law fest, concern for the teenage ostracism she sees in practice in her school (which blends nicely with her use of THE LORD OF THE FLIES in the classroom), and determination to get to the bottom of the mystery even when she is told that her job is over all make her sympathetic and admirable. Roberts's writing is fast-paced and involves the reader at multiple levels. I especially enjoyed the way that Roberts blended together Amanda's teaching experience, her own mother-in-law concerns, and the themes of ostracism into the mystery. CLAIRE AND PRESENT DANGER is almost a fractile experience--every scene is, in some sense, a microcosm of the entire novel. Maybe it's Roberts's experience as an English teacher that makes her write this way but I certainly found it enjoyable and interesting. CLAIRE AND PRESENT DANGER is not filled with constant sleuthing or hard-core detection. Whole chapters go by that are only connected to the mystery symbolically. And experienced mystery readers are likely to wish for a few more red herrings for suspicion to fall upon. Trust me, neither of these detract from the reading experience.

It's official! Series heroine Amanda Pepper and her long-time, ex-cop lover, C.K. Mackenzie have finally decided to commit matrimony. On top of moonlighting with C.K. as private investigators to help keep the wolf from the door while C.K. works on his PhD in criminology, now all she has to do is face up to the pressures of a new term at Philly Prep while bracing herself for a close encounter of the first kind with C. K.'s unconventional parents and pacifying her own demanding family anent her as yet up-in-the-air wedding plans. What Amanda really doesn't need when the novel opens is the added complication of overbearing, reluctant mother-in-law-to-be Claire Fairchild who hires them to do a background check of her wealthy son Leo's enigmatic new fiancee, Emmie Cade, and suddenly winds up very dead because someone has decided to call a halt to their investigation by poisoning her. In for a penny...Amanda doggedly tracks down Emmie's past only to discover that it's a checkered one indeed. There seem to be way too many loose ends for her to make sense of until a clever killer makes one simple yet fatal slip. Amanda may teach English, but she's enough of a mathematician to add up the pieces that quickly point to the real culprit in the veritable nick of time in the slam-bang finale to this thoroughly engrossing caper. As always, the ex-teacher in me takes an enormous amount of pleasure in following Amanda into her classroom and watching her in action. Ms. Roberts has crafted a thoroughly literate, utterly delightful puzzler that kept me guessing right up to the climax. This delightful series just keeps getting better and better as new characters arrive on the scene to share Amanda and C.K.'s lives, and I'm really looking forward to spending more time with Gabby and Boy.

In case you just tuned in: 30-something Amanda Pepper teaches English at a prep school in Philadelphia. Her live-in fiance, Louisiana native C. K. Mackenzie, recently resigned his position as a homicide cop to pursue a Ph.D. in criminology. Though they've collaborated informally to solve murders in the past, the couple now works part-time after school hours in a private investigation firm. After all, poorly-paid private school teachers and beginning graduate students have to watch their pennies, and additional income helps.Enter Claire Fairchild, an elderly woman who hires them to do a background check on her daughter-in-law-to-be, Emmie Cade. Amanda and C.K. easily uncover a number of sordid details from Emmie's dubious past. When they stop by Claire's condo to drop off the information (and hopefully get paid for their work), they discover that their client has died, presumably from a heart attack. But what really happened? And was Emmie involved? While Amanda wants to sort it all out -- against C.K.'s better judgment -- she's simultaneously bombarded with visits from her future in-laws and her own Florida-based parents, and everyone's pressuring the two to set a wedding date and get on with marriage plans. And it's the first week of school, for heaven's sakes; Amanda's also dealing with adolescent angst and _The Lord of the Flies_ to boot. How many balls can she juggle? We keep turning pages to find out.