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Bel Barrett is in her early 50s and has achieved a successful career as a community college communications professor. In fact, she's received several recent teaching awards for her work. But when a colleague shows her a website where students are invited to rate their professors, her world falls apart. There in black and white for all the world to see she finds an unfavorable review of herself posted in a hip hop poetry slam format. There are other reviews there, of course, and those are laudatory, but the negative screed sticks in Bel's craw. She wracks her brain trying to figure out which of her students could have posted this review and comes up with a young man named Naftali to whom she awarded a D for his poor performance. Her bosses call her in and threaten her job over the allegations that Naftali has made about her unfairness. She feels compelled to clear her name. Then Naftali dies, his body discovered on the subway tracks, and Bel becomes the chief suspect in the investigation of his murder. She decides that the detectives have little interest in finding out who really killed this young man and undertakes the investigation herself, not to find justice for Naftali, but to save herself from jail. She goes undercover and begins to interview the murder victim's friends and family. She discovers that Naftali had hoped to make a name for himself in the hip hop world. He was a rapper with a modest following but had yet to record his own album. In order to differentiate himself from the rest of the wannabe rappers out there, Naftali enlisted in the army and was stationed in Iraq, where he wrote rap lyrics about the war. He was injured in combat, lost a limb and returned home early. Bel is able to insinuate herself into Naftali's world very easily. She goes to his sister's home for a haircut and a fortune telling session, meets a concert promoter who worked with Naftali, observes some of his competition in the hip hop scene, and gains lots of information about Naftali's family and career that eventually leads her to the truth behind his murder. A completely extraneous subplot involves Bel's daughter Rebecca. Rebecca lives with her husband and young daughter in Seattle, a long way from Bel's home in New Jersey, and communicates with her mother irregularly. When Bel receives a cryptic e-mail from Rebecca, she makes a huge leap of logic and infers that her daughter's marriage is on the rocks. In her worry, she turns to an online support group in which parents of adult children discuss their frustration over their inability to be a bigger part of their children's lives. The conversations reveal that they behave like overprotective, prying ninnies who fail to see a line between love and disrespect. I looked forward to reading this book because I'm around the same age as Bel and I thought it would be fun to hang out with someone more like me than most of the 30-something sleuths out there. I am sad to report that, I was very disappointed by the lack of depth of characterization and the utter improbability of the character's actions. Anyone who's received several teaching awards is unlikely to be called on the carpet for a random student critique on a website, and if she were, she would bring her grade book and her union rep to the meeting. Worse, even the most crazed police detective is unlikely to believe that a bad student review is a motive for murder. Everyone Bel meets compulsively spills their guts to her, sharing important details they were unwilling to reveal to the police. Most improbably, Bel's able to obtain a subway surveillance tape that the police somehow overlooked. It was the subplot with Rebecca that really had me gnashing my teeth, though. I'm the mother of a 30-something and I cannot imagine behaving as Bel behaved even in my most rabidly protective moments. My advice: If you're looking for a mature woman to hang out with, you would be far better served by re-reading Miss Marple. Save yourself the aggravation of entering Bel Barrett's world.
Reviewed by Carroll Johnson, April 2006
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