The Influencer
Series: Professor Molly Mysteries #10
Author: Frankie Bow
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release Date: March 17, 2021, by Hawaiian Heritage Press
Summary:
In Which Professor Molly Learns There Is, In Fact, Such a Thing as Bad Publicity
It’s spring break. Donnie’s taken the baby to visit relatives on the mainland, and Professor Molly finally has time to catch up on the assessment paperwork she owes the Student Retention Office.
Molly’s new renter is a social media star seeking privacy in remote Mahina. The arrangement seems to be working out–until her celebrity renter disappears. Molly and her best friend Emma dutifully call in the Mahina PD and try to stay out of the way. But when fame creates its own reality distortion field, everyone has an angle and nothing is as it seems.
Interview with Professor Molly Barda
How did you and your author meet?
My author has always liked murder mysteries, and is an avid reader. One day she was reading a book from a popular series and thought it was just okay. In a moment of hubris, she thought, “I can do better than that,” and sat down to write The Musubi Murder.
Why did this writer decide to feature you in a book?
She thought it would be funny to write me as an over-the-top academic caricature: a neurotic, status-conscious, socially-awkward college professor. Imagine her surprise when people read me and “recognize” her. In my opinion she should take it as a compliment.
Do you have any friends or family helping you out?
Emma Nakamura, my best friend at Mahina State, is a biology professor. Her access to labs and equipment has been really helpful (although not admissible as evidence, unfortunately).
Pat Flanagan used to be a crime reporter at the County Courier. After the layoffs, he taught composition at Mahina State, which is how Emma and I met him. His contacts in Mahina PD are amazing, and he can memorize entire conversations without taking notes. Unfortunately for us, Pat found a new job in Honolulu. Emma and I try to stay in touch with him, but it’s harder now that he lives on a different island.
Iker Legazpi, my colleague in the College of Commerce, is my sounding board, confessor, and conscience. Whenever I’m having a moral crisis, I go talk to him and he gently sets me onto the right path. I think Iker is an angel in human form, although I can’t work out why an angel would have been sent to earth to teach accounting.
Do you have a regular job and investigate on the side or are you a full time detective?
I’m the chair of the management department in the College of Commerce, which gives me plenty to do. It’s not like I’m looking for murders to solve. I’m just going about my business and all of a sudden, bam! Severed head in the faculty lounge. (That’s a made-up example, we don’t actually have a faculty lounge.)
What is the funniest thing that happens to you or another character in this story?
Emma’s attempt to calm me down when I found out that our donor relations department wanted to feature my students’ business plans at the annual Senior Showcase. The Senior Showcase is a big deal. All of our most important donors and Friends in the Business Community (i.e. potential donors) attend. So of course I’m freaking out.
Emma doesn’t understand. She thinks it’s an honor to have my students invited and I have nothing to complain about.
“No,” I tell her, “because if my students’ presentations are anything other than perfect and one hundred percent inoffensive, I’ll be vilified for alienating our donors. And if everything is flawless and anodyne, I’ll get in trouble for boring them. And if I refuse to participate, I’m not a team player.”
“You’ll be fine, Molly. You got this,” she says. And then she follows up with, “Didn’t you just go to some donor dinner thing last year?”
Like that’s supposed to calm me down? At the “donor dinner thing” Emma is referring to, Donnie and I were forced to sit at the same table as my awful ex, I sprang a breast milk leak that ruined my favorite blouse, and oh yeah, someone died, and I got blamed for it.
Emma is good at lots of things. Comforting people isn’t one of them.
Have you solved other cases or is this your first one?
There have been a few cases over the course of the book series, but I can’t take credit for solving them all. In fact, it’s never just me. It’s always cooperating with other people and putting all of the pieces together.
Do you have a gift or special talent?
Emma says that my superpower is being super fussy. I prefer to say that I’m observant when it comes to details.
Who is the most important individual in your life?
In my life? It’s a tie between my husband Donnie and our baby Francesca. Donnie is my “life” partner, and Francesca is actively taking years off my “life” through sleep deprivation. So they’re both important in my life, in different ways.
What is your ideal vacation?
Once Francesca is potty-trained, the whole world will feel like a vacation. I can’t think of anything better than that.
If you could change anything about your life what would it be?
I earned my Ph.D. from one of the top ten literature and creative writing programs in the country. I expected to end up at an elite campus in a trendy city, teaching seminars on Kafka.
Of course if you know anything about the humanities job market, you can guess things didn’t quite work out that way.
My dissertation advisor was crushed when I finally accepted a position in the College of Commerce at remote Mahina State University. He complained that “teaching a roomful of slack jawed baseball caps how to pad their resumes” was “a grievous waste of my fine critical mind.” Well, my “fine critical mind” was telling me that after a year of fruitless job hunting, it was time for me to get a living wage and health benefits.
At first I was disappointed in myself too. It didn’t help when my mother would remind me that there were plenty of jobs for “real” (by which she meant medical) doctors.
But now, I wouldn’t trade the life I have for the one I thought I’d have. I have a great family, wonderful friends, and what was I thinking, wanting to spend my career in an English department? Say what you like about working in a business school, there’s a reason they say Hell has two English departments. So yeah, things are going pretty well for me. And when Francesca finally gets potty trained…my life is going to be pretty near perfect.
I mean, except for all the murders.
Other Book in the Series
About the Author
Like Professor Molly, Frankie Bow teaches at a public university. Unlike her protagonist, she is blessed with delightful students, sane colleagues, and a perfectly nice office chair. She believes if life isn’t fair, at least it can be entertaining. In addition to writing murder mysteries, she publishes in scholarly journals under her real name. Her experience with academic publishing has taught her to take nothing personally.
Contact the Author
Giveaway
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Happy Reading!
Thanks for featuring The Influencer! The interview was a lot of fun to do (or so my character tells me…:-))