MURDER ON THE CLASS TRIP

Chaperoning a class trip is the next-to-last thing two private investigators have in mind. The last thing is murder.

Even though Maya Kendrick’s husband has been released from jail and their 17-year-old daughter, Vanessa, is ready to resume their family life as it was before he was convicted, Maya knows it will take time before the two former police officers can mend their relationship. While she’s still struggling, the principal of the high school attended by Vanessa and Ryan, the son of Maya’s business partner, Sandra Wallage, calls Maya and Sandra in not to offer a paying job but to ask them to chaperone a field trip. Maya immediately says no, but Sandra leaves the door open, and soon they find themselves on the way to Washington, D.C., in a school bus driven by an aging retiree with a death wish. Sandra, the soon-to-be ex-wife of Sen. Stephen Wallage, knows backbiting Washington society all too well. When she and Maya find Stephen’s intern, Tess, dead in his bed, the police initially consider her death a suicide, but the pair take on the case thinking that even if Stephen can stay out of prison, his career will need help. And they’re right, because Stephen’s political enemies call for his resignation and even plant stories with the press to make him look guilty. The sleuths must not only rescue Stephen by finding the real killer, but ask which of the students they are chaperoning might be suspects.

A class act whose two strong women face both murder and marital problems with courage and humor.