The Bookroom Murders

The police shooting of Ferguson teenager Michael Brown again raises the situation of racial unrest in America. My novel, The Bookroom Murders, depicts racial confrontation in an inner city high school, where police use excessive force to deal with the situation, and students are shot and mauled by dogs. Also, The Bookroom Murders is not your typical mystery. It is a coming of age story, involving a battle of the sexes and an odyssey of self-realization. The teacher narrator is intelligent, quirky, self-deprecating, and irreverent. The story has elements of a teacher's worst nightmare. And this is not the typical teacher-against-the-odds victory cliche'. Instead, it is violent, ironic, darkly humorous, sexually explicit and bizarre. The story is multi-ethnic, with strong female characters--Chinese, Latina and Italian--as well as a sexist teacher, who is not a paragon, and happens to be a murder suspect.