Mystery 101

In the town of Garrison, Washington, Amy Winslow is an English Professor at Elmstead College, she specializing in crime fiction. She is the daughter of Professor Emeritus Graham Winslow, who, following the death of his wife, has returned to writing, the latest being the next in his Atticus Keller series of mystery novels. She learns that her boss, Professor Miller, is hoping that she will take over as Department chair whenever he retires. Amy and her TA Bud's interest in crime fiction turns to real crime when they believe one of her keener students Lacey Daniels and her boyfriend Rex Handford have gone missing, Amy who is eventually able to convince the Garrison PD that a crime has indeed been committed. Detectives Travis Burke, a recent arrival to Garrison from Chicago, and newly minted Claire Tate, one of Amy's former students and the Police Chief's daughter, are assigned to the investigation. Due in part to the ties to the college and Amy's interest especially in Lacey's welfare, Chief Tate allows both Amy and Bud to work on the investigation, Bud to assist Claire in the mundane grunt work of reviewing two weeks worth of surveillance footage, while Amy will formally be assigned as college liaison in assisting Travis in field work. This assignment does not sit well with Travis, who sees Amy's involvement as amateur meddling. Travis' view quickly changes when he sees that Amy, through her knowledge of crime fiction, does have a unique and valuable perspective. When they learn that Lacey and Rex both worked on the college newspaper, the Elmstead Current, the investigators collectively believe that what has happened to Lacey and Rex has something to do with one of the stories he, she or they were working on, one on computer hacking of the Math Department computers and the purported black market sale of math tests, and another of the purported plagiarized published major paper by an unknown tenured professor at the college. They also begin to believe that it may be tied to another investigation on which Travis and Claire had previously been assigned at the college, namely the theft of a newly developed climate change resistant plant from the Life Sciences Department, it potentially worth millions on the open market. As a mutual attraction seems to be forming between Amy and Travis, Graham, who doesn't like Amy's involvement, wants some assurance from Travis that he will keep Amy safe from whoever is behind these real life crimes.