Coup De Grace

With ready wit and lethal plot, acclaimed author J. S. Borthwick offers up her tenth irresistible Sarah Deane mystery, a heady brew of academic backstabbing--and murder-- at a bucolic New England girls’ boarding school.

Freshly-minted Ph.D. Sarah Deane is hired to teach English at  Miss Merritt’s, only to land in the epicenter of legendary French professor Grace (“Mme. Guillotine”) Carpentier’s reign of terror. Mme.’s peckish passion for excellence has inspired universal fear and loathing. A student discovers Mme.’s cloaked hanging effigy. Then Sarah finds a bludgeoned body wearing Mme’s trademark cape. But the victim is not Mme.  Is it a case of mistaken identity? It’s up to Sarah, aided by her husband Alex, to find the killer before he strikes again--while the prime suspects, three fractious students, and three furtive professors, follow her every move...