After an adventuresome summer involving a dead body in her
trunk at the Iowa State Fair, Tressa Jayne Turner is
heading back to school in nearby Des Moines. She has a
love/hate relationship with her carpooling buddies -- she
loves her cousin Frankie, but hates his girlfriend Dixie.
Since she's a local newspaper reporter, Tressa is taking
journalism classes and eager for a great assignment. She's
very interested in her friends' criminal law class after
Dixie notices an eerie similarity between her lecture notes
and a campus crime spree.
Whenever the professor introduces a new offense, the same
crime is committed that night on the college campus.
Littering and vandalism soon progress towards mugging, hit-
and-run and worse. Tressa and her friends cannot convince
the local authorities to take the matter seriously, so they
take matters into their own hands. Tressa earned her
nickname Calamity Jayne by getting into more than her fair
share of trouble, but since the next crimes on the syllabus
are rape and murder, she and her friends work overtime to
find the serial-criminal before it's too late.
Kathleen Bacus lets the personalities of her
distinctive characters run free with sharp dialogue and
quick-witted introspection. More outlandish than Stephanie
Plum, more unorthodox than Nancy Drew and funnier than
anything I've read in a long time, this Tressa Jayne Turner
chick-lit comedy mystery is a guaranteed good time!
Ace cub reporter Tressa Jayne Turner is carrying a full
load — and we’re not talking post-holiday pounds. Back in
college for the fourth time (but who’s counting?), she’s
also looking to nab a raise from her stingy boss at the
Gazette. So, what’s to stop her from making the grade?
Could it be the botched betrothal that’s more than just
schoolyard gossip? Or maybe it’s the two men in hot pursuit
of her heart. And let’s not forget the campus criminal
that’s out to teach the student body a lesson — one crime
at a time. It’s a case of murder and mayhem by the books…
and failure is so not an option.