None of the children are hurt, in fact, thanks to the heroics of assistant principal Carol Crane. Carol saves a special-needs child who was locked in a closet for mysterious reasons. Sweet Carol isn't all she seems, however. Lucy overhears her doing a Jekyll-and-Hyde act to the beloved school custodian, ending in his being fired. Then Carol turns up dead. Who did it? The list of suspects gets longer by the day.

Unfortunately, my reaction to Back to School Murder could best be described as "ho-hum". The characterizations are so flat that we never get any feeling for what drives Lucy, other than she appears to be an incredible busybody who happens to always be at the right place at the right time. Her husband is mostly an overbearing jerk who delights in ordering Lucy around, and the secondary characters seem to take up space more than anything.

What the book does have is lots and lots of minutiae. There are plenty of scenes of Lucy being a Good Mom, as she takes her daughter to the hospital for an asthma attack and reminisces about showing her oldest son his baby pictures. She makes dinner. She takes the baby to day care and picks the baby up from day care. She fusses over her kids' friends. It was tedious, to say the least, and didn't advance the plot. Where was this story going?

In between Mom Things, suspicious characters weave in and out of the story. There's a preacher who is a little wacky. There's a college instructor who knew Carol. Even the high-school soccer coach isn't above suspicion.

By the time the mystery is solved, more out of the blue than anything else, I had pretty much lost interest. If you like stories in which every detail is described to the nth degree, Back to School Murder may well appeal to you. If you like your stories a bit faster-paced, this one probably won't satisfy.

--Cathy Sova