Dead Week: A Cassandra Sato Mystery

In Brakenhoff’s straightforward second Cassandra Sato mystery (after 2019’s Death by Dissertation), Cassandra, the vice president of student affairs at Nebraska’s Morton College, has to deal with more than one difficult situation. Morton’s Dead Week—the week right before finals that’s intended as a “period of substantial and predictable QUIET study time”—may be disrupted by plans by some deaf students to launch a protest over what they think is inadequate accommodation by the college administration, including a possible hunger strike and class boycotts. Meanwhile, Rachel Nagle, who was one of the students contemplating protests, is injured after someone pushes her down on the ice, but she has trouble getting people to believe it wasn’t an accident. Cassandra’s sleuthing reveals a possible connection between the attack on Rachel and an older crime. Brakenhoff integrates very real concerns about how to make a college campus truly inclusive into a diverting whodunit. Fans of Jane Langton’s Homer Kelly books will be pleased. (Self-published)