Lights, Camera-- Murder — Ron Lovell

The high stakes game of university recruiting and a scandal involving athletes form the centerpiece of Ron Lovell's new Thomas Martindale mystery, "Lights, Camera … Murder." Martindale is acting as the liaison between the university and a video production company to prepare a series of television advertisements to attract new students. When one of his young students is murdered, Martindale goes on the trail of her killer. Along the way, he uncovers a scandal involving the recruitment of black football players. He also encounters the wife of a coach who will stop at nothing to get young men into her bed and keep her exploits secret.

More campus-oriented than the two previous novels in the Martindale series, "Murder at Yaquina Head" and "Dead Whales Tell No Tales," "Lights, Camera … Murder" also skewers the committee system that dominates most universities and reveals the amusing--and often tedious--day-to-day world of the classroom. As always, Martindale's search for the killer puts him in danger in some unlikely places: the steam tunnels running under campus, an isolated covered bridge, and the high cliffs behind an isolated inn above the churning Pacific Ocean.