Final Exam - Hardcover

by Louis Pugliese (Author)

'Final Exam, ' is a Crime Fiction/Thriller. It's also a prequel to my last book, 'Blame it on the Moon, ' featuring several of the same characters.

Don Weston left a long career of big-city policing in Philadelphia behind for a semi-retirement position as the Police Chief at Churchville University, a small liberal arts college. The new job is a pleasant slowdown from the urban career, allowing Don to pursue his other interests as an amateur Civil War historian and law enforcement consultant.

Like all small liberal arts schools, Churchville faces the difficult survival struggles of declining enrollment, under endowment, and academic resistance to hard changes. The idyllic environment is increasingly threatened with uncertainty and the small community has become a hotbed of politics and administrative drama. Don is considering hanging up this career as well when the College Provost goes missing on a Monday and a preliminary investigation raises a number of questions for Don.

Within days, another faculty member has committed suicide, and the body of the College President is discovered, gruesomely murdered, in the school auditorium. It falls on Don to pool the contacts and resources of his time in Philadelphia in solving a multi-faceted puzzle of clues and questionable relationships.