Final Exam

About the Book

When Ben Hardesty burned out as a big-city reporter, he turned to teaching, but he was not a typical college professor. He didn’t care about tenure or textbooks. Instead, he gave his journalism students hands-on experience. But his final exam turned out to be a tragic mistake. Now police detective Jo Ferris must discover whether the test was just an unfortunate accident or whether ugly undercurrents of race and greed at a state university prompted a cold, calculated murder.

About the Author

Kathleen M. Fraze, daughter of a steelworker and a maternity ward nurse, was born and raised in Massillon, Ohio. She became infatuated with journalism as a teenager, thanks to her grandmother, Ruth Kane, a longtime City Hall and police reporter who got Fraze her first job as a 16-year-old reporter at the Massillon Evening Independent. Fraze graduated from Bowling Green State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and has worked for more than 30 years as a reporter and editor for the Beacon Journal in Akron, Ohio. She also has taught editing classes at Kent State University. Fraze has one son, New York artist Bryan Larrick, who painted the cover illustration. Final Exam is the second of her crime novels featuring police detective Jo Ferris.