Dangerous Admissions: Secrets of a Closet Sleuth

Wielding “her weapon of choice, a lethally sharpened Cole-erase blue pencil,” Miranda “Rannie” Bookman makes a dynamic sleuth in O'Connor's lively romantic suspense debut. The plucky freelance copyeditor and single mom is shocked when her son, Nate, becomes a suspect in the murder of A. Lawrence “Tut” Tutwiler, director of college admissions for the exclusive Chapel School on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Parents will kill to get their kids into “Chaps,” where Nate's a senior and Rannie's taken a temporary part-time job. Will Chaps students also kill to get into the right university? Has recovering addict and former student Grant Werner come back for revenge? Or is the S.W.A.K. serial killer stalking the Upper West Side now targeting Chaps's faculty members? O'Connor, a veteran children's book author (Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy ), proves she can also please adults with a fresh, grammatically correct crime solver equally adept at deleting dangling participles and exposing psychotic killers. (Aug.)