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Rating: 
Summary: Mildly entertaining, if flawed
Review: As the other reviewer has already mentioned, Rosemary is not convincing as a young woman - she definitely seems as if she is a widow in her fifties, not in her thirties. Also, the authors obviously know a lot about school, but very little about the ministry. They don't even mention whether Rosemary is ordained or not until the book is nearly half over, and it is alluded to in the most casual of ways, and we never know what denomination she is! Ordination to the ministry is a pretty significant event! I've also never heard of a chaplain being called "Dean," but that might have been the case at their schools. Finally, that Rosemary might find one or more love interest in a small college town amused me. The murderer was fairly obvious, to me, at least, and the book was nicely written and entertaining, but I am glad I got it from the library rather than buying it. I'd give it two and a half stars if I could.
Rating: 
Summary: Good First Effort
Review: I enjoyed this first effort at an academic mystery. The protagonist, a woman college chaplain at an Eastern liberal arts college, was interesting and likable. I would look forward to reading another installment in the series, hopefully seeing progression in plot and character development. I do agree with other reviewers who commented that Rosemary acted older than a 38-year-old should in 2002, about a decade or so older. This can be remedied, however. Perhaps, the two authors should read two recent excellent mystery series about women clerics--the Lily Connor books by Michelle Blake and the Clare Ferguson book (I hope it will become a series) by Julia Spencer-Fleming--and the English professor Karen Pelletier series by Joanne Dobson for a little guidance.
Rating:
Summary: Possibilities Abound
Review: This is the first entry in a proposed series featuring Rosemary Stubbs who gave up a lucrative job as a CFO to attend Yale Divinity School and then take a job at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. In this outing, Stubbs no sooner arrives on campus than dead bodies start appearing. Stubbs finds the woman who recruited her dead in the new gym's swimming pool. She sets out - kind of - to find out who killed the woman while trying to settle into her new job. It is obvious that this book was written by two authors (Jill Ker Conway and Elizabeth Kennan writing as Clare Munnings) because one author uses polysllabic words where a one syllable word would suffice - I found it jarring and disruptive. I'm not opposed to polysllabic words, I just don't like seeing them used for the sake of using them - it's as if the author wanted us to know that she could use the words. It is this same author who could have used a strong editor because some of her sentences were very hard to understand in the context of the paragraph and the events occurring in the book. Also there isn't a smooth flow of time in the book. One minute Stubbs in on the streets of New York and the next she's driving up I-91 in Vermont. I'll read the second book in this series, but I won't read beyond that if the problems mentioned above continue.
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