P.M. Carlson: Murder Misread (USA 2015)

From the Publisher:
Statistician Maggie Ryan returns to her alma mater to consult for Professor Charlie Fielding, who is conducting experiments on how skilled readers read. She is invited to a celebratory luncheon with retired professor Tal Chandler. But Chandler is found dead before he gets to the restaurant. The police say suicide, but Maggie offers a different reading of the crime scene, casting suspicion on Fielding, others in the psychology department and the dead man's grieving widow.

This Mystery Company edition restores to print the seventh novel in the Maggie Ryan series.

"A tasty blend of irreverence (Carlson enjoys jokes at the expense of academics) and sincerity (her portrayal of the murder victim's wife is touching). Maggie is an engaging everywoman - wife, mother, professional - who conducts her crime-busting with panache." - Margot Mifflin in Entertainment Weekly

P.M. Carlson: Murder Misread. Maggie Ryan, 1977. The Crum Creek Press / The Mystery Company, ISBN: 9781932325461 (August, 2015), 244 p., $16.00, eBook $5.99.

P.M. Carlson: Murder Misread (USA 1990)

From the Publisher:
Maggie Ryan, a lively statistician with a sharp investigative instinct, was planning on a serene academic interlude when she returned to her alma mater as a consultant to reading expert Charlie Fielding. But the serenity is short-lived and Maggie finds herself in the thick of enigma when Tal Chandler, a wonderfully popular retired professor and former department chairman, is found dead on campus, an apparent suicide - except that the gun is found in the right hand of the left-handed academician.

As che campus security force and the local police department bristle over jurisdictional disputes and point accusatory fingers at Charlie, Maggie is busy tracking down clues and sharing conjectures with the victim's grieving but cool-headed widow. Convinced that the likable young man has been framed. Maggie begins digging up the hidden aspects of his colleagues lives. Watching a web of disquieting revelations unraveling before her cyes, Maggie realizes that any one of several members of the Ed Psych department of the prominent university could have committed the worst crime of all.

From the murky past of the department chairman to the troubled present of the attractive department secretary, every undisclosed fact, each unearched secret, suggests a plausible motive. And the deeper Maggie delves, the more danger her family faces.

P.M. Carlson: Murder Misread. Doubleday Crime Club, ISBN: 0385416423 (November, 1990), 181 p., $14.95.