I’m an English teacher in a suburban high school, and most of the time I love my job. I could do without the standardized tests, the helicopter parents, and the pesky president of our board of education, but aside from those irritations, I feel lucky to be able to live most of my life inside a book.

This is why, when a certain melancholy event occurred, it was Jane Austen’s words that came to mind and not those of the Valerian Hills Police Department. The detectives assigned to investigate Marcia Deaver’s death thought she committed suicide, but they were wrong. She was murdered.

My evidence might not have held up in a court of law. Nonetheless, I offer this paraphrase of the opening lines of Pride and Prejudice as proof: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that no self-respecting English teacher would kill herself without leaving behind a perfectly penned suicide note, with detailed footnotes and suggestions for further reading. In other words, if Marcia died by her own hand, you can be sure she’d have assigned blame with the same relentless rigor she employed to grade her students’ essays.

There were other reasons, of course, that convinced me my fellow English teacher had died an unnatural death. No one loses thirty pounds, buys a whole new wardrobe, and suffers through multiple facial injections to look good in a coffin. As my students would say, Not happening. Even more compelling than Marcia’s expensive makeover, was the fact that she’d left a series of coded lesson plans that suggested dark forces were at work beneath the sunny surface of Valerian Hills High School.

My husband said Marcia’s death was none of my business. But when does something become our business, whether or not we want it to? My colleague’s lesson plans were in her substitute folder, which we used for emergencies. I was Marcia’s substitute. This was an emergency.

Marcia was talking to me.

Lesson Plan For Murder, A Master Class Mystery Book #1
Genre: Cozy
Release: June 2023
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase link

English teacher Marcia Deaver’s untimely death elicited very little grief from her colleagues at Valerian Hills High School. Some staff members assume the cause of death was a heart attack, or perhaps a suicide, but Liz Hopewell suspects many of her coworkers had both the motive and the means to kill Marcia.

After the police begin investigating the death as a murder, Liz finds Marcia’s mysteriously coded lesson plans. Convinced they hold the key to the killer’s identity, risk-averse Liz finds herself obsessed with the crime. Against the wishes of her husband and the handsome detective assigned to the case, she embarks upon a quest that takes her down a sordid trail of infidelity, blackmail, and Shakespeare conspiracy theories.

When additional staff members are also poisoned, Liz realizes her clandestine pursuit has spooked the killer, and she is likely next on the list. Can Liz expose the murderer before she becomes the next victim?

Author Note: The heading for each chapter of Lesson Plan For Murder is the title of a famous work of literature, and for all the armchair detectives out there, those titles also provide coded clues. No final exam will be given, but extra credit is a definite possibility.

About the author:
Lori Robbins is the author of the On Pointe and Master Class mystery series and is a contributor to The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers Cookbook. She won the Indie Award for Best Mystery and the Silver Falchion for Best Cozy Mystery. Short stories include “Leading Ladies” which was cited in the 2022 Best American Mystery and Suspense anthology. A former dancer, Lori performed with a number of modern dance and classical ballet companies and now writes full time. She is co-president of the New York/Tristate Sisters in Crime.

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