Class Dismissed

Every small rural community has secrets some harmless and embarrassing and others dark and ugly. No question whats hung over Harrison a college town in southern Indiana. The mysterious death of Marlene Scott a precocious high school student has gone unsolved for 50 years. Enter Phillip J. (Flip) Doyle and a course he teaches at Harrison College a sleepy staid academic fortress yet to discover the 21st century. The schools ambitious new president Jonathan Casey wants to change all this with new barrier-breaking faculty like Flip and their curriculum proposals. First Flip must tiptoe his way past tenure-obsessed colleagues an entrenched dean and arcane department meetings sure cures for insomnia. As a lowly young instructor with no PhD to his name it was a high wire act for him simply to introduce a writing course to the Harrison curriculum---judged by peers too utilitarian and not a credible higher ed offering. Through Flips networking the students got their work published in the local Hoosier-Record helping to revive a struggling newspaper faculty considered a joke. And looking back it was inevitable the ambitious young teacher and his merry band of bright students would run head-first into the Marlene Scott case. Could they solve a 50-year old murder mystery? Did new technology open doors to a solution? Could the killer be found on Google? Joining Flip and the students in this exercise was a helpful young woman Maria an outsider who opened their eyes to a world under their noses. Little did they know her own story was as compelling as the one they chased.