Book ~ "Quick Study" (2009) Maggie Barbieri

From Amazon ~ In Barbieri's third book to feature English professor Alison Bergeron, Alison befriends Hernan Escalante and his extended family from Ecuador at the soup kitchen where she's doing community service north of New York City. When the beaten body of Jose Tomasso, one of Hernan's relatives and an illegal immigrant, surfaces in the Hudson near Riviera Pointe, a luxury condo development in the Bronx where Jose was a construction worker, Alison offers to help Hernan find out what happened. After a second murder at Riviera Pointe, Hernan disappears. Alison's investigation leads her and her sidekicks, including her faithful canine companion, Trixie, into all sorts of nail-biting danger. An offer of assistance from former sweetie Jack McManus, marketing director for the New York Rangers, tests Alison's relationship with her main squeeze, NYPD detective Bobby Crawford. Barbieri scores again with this high-octane blend of romance, laughs and chills.

This is the third book in this series.

Alison is a prof at a Catholic university. She stumbles into situations that wouldn't happen to anyone else. The rest of us would walk away. Instead she charges in to solve the problem.

This time she is trying to solve the murder of Jose, a fella she knows from the soup kitchen she volunteers at once a week. Even though her cop boyfriend tells her to back off and someone is leaving her threatening notes, she still tries to find out what happened.

Jack McManus, the brother of her friend who is a priest, still pursues her even though he knows she has a boyfriend.

Max, her recently married friend, is having problems with her husband, who is Alison's boyfriend's partner. I'm not a fan of Max's ... I find her self-centered.

I enjoyed the writing style and it kept me interested even though I found the plot not overly exciting. The ending was quick and I didn't really care about the bad guys who got caught in the end and what they were involved with.

I look forward to reading the next one in the series.