But during a chaotic dress rehearsal, as the other clowns watch in stunned disbelief, one of their number deliberately shoots and kills teacher Corrinne Buldock, the show’s director, during her unscheduled stint as assistant to a hapless magician.

Molly, being the only clown who conveniently managed to misplace the red gloves that were part of the costume, is consequently the only clown in the clear - as all witnesses agree that the shooter definitely wore gloves (covered in plastic to eliminate gunpowder residue). But none of the other carbon-copy clowns can be positive about exactly who was where and with whom at the time of the shooting.

As she investigates the murder, Molly attempts to untangle a Gordian knot of interconnections, festering animosity, and underhanded dealings among the clownish suspects. Was Corrinne killed because of her questionable and ill-advised trysts with a handsome senior at dear old Carlton Central High School? Was the intended victim actually the guardian of a student in the process of legally “divorcing” her apparently unfit mother? Was the motive tied to the cutthroat jockeying among several parents frantic for their offspring to shine as Carlton’s valedictorian? Was violent death the result of a love affair gone bad, or of the acrimonious breakup of a doll business partnership?

Persistent Molly churns up secret after secret as she blithely juggles crime solving with the mundane minutiae of suburban mom-hood. Whether she’s kibitzing with suspects, designing clever cartoons for her fax greeting-card business, coping with her family, helping out at the high school, ignoring admonitions from the police (in the person of her friend Lauren’s husband), offering ad hoc counseling to a troubled teen, or dealing with the incompetent workers building her new sunroom, Molly hardly breaks stride even when a pipe bomb explodes in her car or when a second victim turns up - reducing the suspect pool by one.

While the level of intrigue and dirty doings at a presumably average suburban high school - and the parents’ nearly maniacal involvement in grade wars and the competition for valedictory honors - seem rather excessive, author Leslie O’Kane crafts a generally interesting story that is fast-paced and quite readable overall. It’s somewhat difficult to differentiate among the fairly large cast of characters, particularly at the beginning, and there are some head-scratching moments (as when the murderer inexplicably tries to cover up a shooting by staging a suicide-by-carbon-monoxide-poisoning, or when the high school principal seems hopelessly laissez-faire about rampant chicanery), but, overall, O’Kane manages to sweep the reader into Molly’s milieu, offering a few delightful chuckles along the way as Molly turns day-to-day happenings into fodder for her greeting cards.

Molly’s trap for the killer and her “aha!” moment are both disappointingly weak, and the initial success of the killer in effecting Corrinne’s murder depends on some happenstance, but the appeal of this story lies in the breezy temperament of the heroine and the descriptions of the familiar routines and tribulations of suburban life, rather than in complex puzzles and intricate plotting.

--Eleanor Mikucki