The School Board Murders : A Molly Masters Mystery (Molly Masters Series)

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Summary: Funny witty delightful mystery
Review: After living in Colorado for numerous years, the Masters familyreturn home to Carlton, New York. The matriarch Molly decides to stayat home to raise her two school aged children while running a business that sends any occasion cards via a fax. Though her business is not doing quite well, Molly is more concerned with school issues, especially since her father Charlie joined the school board.

The school budget is under siege as there is only enough funds to support either the arts curriculum or the sports program. Board president Sylvia Greene runs a vicious campaign using blackmail to force her peers to commit the money to the sports program. For instance, she threatens to reveal a nasty secret from Charlie's past if he fails to vote for her side. During the vote itself, someone poisons Sylvia with the main suspicion falling on Charlie. Unable to believe her father would kill someone, Molly places herself at risk to flush out a murderer.

Just like a FAX OF LIFE, most fans of the Molly Masters mysteries know that the novels are some of the best remedies for lifting weary individuals out of their slump. Leslie O'Kane has a wicked sense of humor that especially surfaces when Molly designs a greeting card. THE SCHOOL BOARD MURDERS is a good juicy mystery filled with red herrings that turns the unexpected story line into an excellent hard to figure out puzzler. JUST THE FAX, this tale is a fun book that enhances an entertaining series that leaves readers contented, but wanting more works from Ms. O'Kane.

Harriet Klausner END

Rating:
Summary: Molly masters it again
Review: In The School Board Murders, Molly Master, the witty, fax greeting card mistress, finds her greeting card humor and sleuthing skills tested yet again.

The local school board is having a meeting about funding and where it should go -- to the arts or to sports. As we all know, the school disagreement of sports VS art has been handed down from generation to generation all over America, but Leslie O'Kane's mystery adds an unusual twist to the subject. School politics rears its ugly head once again, and the typical group of common folk who have become indifferent, sanctimonious, and offensive (with the exception of Molly's dad), due to the power they think their seats possess, are endanger of being toppled from their self-glorified thrones by their leader. Molly, along with her parents, goes to a meeting knowing that the board president has threatened to expose a secret in her father's past if he doesn't agree to vote for sports. After returning from a private meeting, Sylvia Greene, the president, falls to poison in front of a crowd of parents and live on the town's local TV channel. Molly's father is being blamed. Molly learns her father's secret and decides to put her self in the way of danger, literally, to clear his name and find the real killer.

You gotta love the sense of humor Leslie O'Kane gives Mollie; it's laugh out loud funny. The subject of sports VS art may be an old one, but the mystery plot is fresh. The false leads kept me going, and the sub-characters are true enough that they will most likely remind you of someone you know, too.

Rating:
Summary: School Boring Murders
Review: Yawn. I have read all of Leslie O'Kane's books and liked this the least. The characters were cardboard stereotypes, not at all believeable. Molly spends her time investigating the murder of a very unlikeable woman in order to clear her father's name. I wanted to scream when her clueless Dad insisted on taking the blame for crimes he didn't commit. I just couldn't get interested in the whole thing.