Final Straw

About the Book

Jo Ferris is a small-town cop dealing with small-town crime and a recently widowed mother. It isn’t the way she pictured her future when she was growing up, but it’s steady work and it has its small rewards. Then one night, someone puts a bullet in her police chief’s head and Jo’s small town is suddenly big news. The investigation into his murder turns up the sins of the past as well as the present, and in the end, brings Jo face to face with a ruthless killer

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.