One Coffee With

Margaret Maron

Vanderlyn College is one of the colleges in the middle of New York City. It is an urban school with the normal compliment of departments in its brick buildings. The Art College never played academic politics, though, and is squeezed onto the upper floors of one of the buildings. The main office area is a warren of small spaces that the faculty staff share with the dean and the office secretary. The office is always chaotic with people coming and going between classes, art labs, research, and general school business. So when the assistant chairman is poisoned in the office, there are many suspects.

Lieutenant Sigrid Harald is the only woman detective in the Homicide Department of her precinct. She is careful to protect her image, withdrawing into her normally introvert self. She projects an business image rather than a feminine one. The Vanderlyn College poisoning falls to her in a normal rotation of calls. She has Detective Tildon arrive first. He is very methodical and observant. He records everything, and his notes have been known to help solve cases. She is pleased he is helping her on this case.

One of the odd parts about the murder is the question of the intended victim. Both Professor Quinn, the victim, and Professor Oscar Nauman, the department chairman, had requested coffee prepared the same way with sugar. Both cups were sitting on the filing cabinet awaiting their return from their class. How did the murderer know Quinn would take the right cup? Or is Nauman the real target?

This is the first book in Margaret Maron's Sigrid Harald series. The murder is well thought out and the story is nicely written. While not the greatest book by Maron I've read, I enjoyed the escape it gave me.

One Coffee With
Death of a Butterfly
Death in Blue Folders
The Right Jack
Baby Doll Games
Corpus Christmas
Past Imperfect
Fugitive Colors
Three-Day Town

The Bootlegger's Daughter by Margaret Maron