The Campus Murder Mystery in the Era of Budget Cuts

HILO, Hawaii - Jan. 29, 2015 - PRLog -- "Our guest of honor, Jimmy Tanaka, may have been The Most Hated Man in Hawaii, but he was also the biggest donor in the history of the College of Commerce. We were in no position to be picky about the moral character of our benefactors. Not after the latest round of budget cuts."

Amanda Cross’s Kate Fansler holds court in a richly-appointed office in stately Baldwin Hall. Joanne Dobson’s Karen Pelletier sleuths at the leafy and exclusive Enfield College.

Professor Molly Barda, reluctant amateur sleuth and narrator of The Musubi Murder, longs for working air conditioning. She sits on a yoga ball because there is no budget for office furniture. Her dean, unwilling to lose paying customers, won’t let her report cheating students.

The Musubi Murder has found an enthusiastic audience among academics, who appreciate the realistic portrayal of their working conditions. A math professor at a mainland college remarked, “I was laughing out loud. Some of the scenes are freakishly familiar.”

"A few weeks after the Student Retention Office remodel was finished, the Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Engagement attended an ed-tech conference. Upon his return, we were directed to record our class sessions and post them online, so that students could watch them at their leisure. The problem was that we were 'guides on the side' now, and the Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Engagement didn’t want to post hour-long videos of students sitting in circles talking. So we all had to go back to being 'sages on the stage,' lecturing to the video camera, but this time we were cautioned to act as 'facilitators of experience' rather than 'providers of knowledge.' We’re still stuck with the immovable round tables."

Molly Barda is very much a fish out of water. Not only is she a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing who ended up teaching business communication; she’s also a mainland big-city girl trying to adjust to life in rural Hawaii.

"I knew I was supposed to remove my shoes before entering someone’s house, but what about stockings? I couldn’t exactly wiggle out of my Wolfords and leave them in a crumpled wad by the front door."

Frankie Bow, author of The Musubi Murder, insists that all people and events in The Musubi Murder are fictional. Like Molly Barda, she teaches at a public university. Unlike her protagonist, she says she is blessed with delightful students, sane colleagues, a loving family, and a perfectly nice office chair.

The Musubi Murder is the first book in the Molly Barda Mysteries. It is available on audio, suitable for long commutes or marathon grading sessions.

Download it from iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/the-musubi-murder-u...),

Audible (http://www.audible.com/pd/Mysteries-Thrillers/The-Musubi-...) or

Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/The-Musubi-Murder/dp/B00S8J6W34).

Book Two, Molly Barda and the Cursed Canoe, will come out in 2016. Read more at www.frankiebow.com