COMING SOON: November 11, 2026
During their annual mountain hike, lawyers Jane Baker and Alexandra Kowalski discover a man's body sprawled across a rocky outcropping. Desperate to avoid becoming involved, they leave it for someone else to report. But Jane's OCD and mounting anxiety won't let her walk away.
She returns to the mountain, where one reckless decision sets off a chain of consequences she can't undo. Then she learns the victim was a manipulative professor she had every reason to hate-the same man Alex confronted over a parking space only hours before his death. Detective Morelle Morgan soon uncovers no shortage of suspects: former lovers, embittered colleagues, the professor's own doctoral-candidate daughter, and even the CIA, which he believed had targeted him for decades. And, of course, Jane and Alex. Everyone had a motive. This is the first book in the "Jane Baker, JD, OCD Mystery Series"
Praise for The Professor Perishes
RECOMMENDED by the US Review
"Jane sat up in bed on Sunday morning, two weeks after Professor Cohen died, and thought about the mess her life had become."
When Professor Nathan Cohen's body is found at the bottom of a cliff, questions abound. Was this an accident, a suicide, or a murder? With a lawyer's eye for detail, author Helms carefully builds cases against the primary suspects: Jane, a lawyer with obsessive-compulsive disorder and a long-ago student of the professor; Hannah, the professor's daughter with whom he is recently estranged; Frank, Hannah's lover and a man the professor considers far too old for his daughter; and Alex, Jane's friend and someone who had a loud and very public argument with the professor just prior to his death. As Detective Morelle Morgan and her team investigate the incident, more suspects emerge, and as the professor's shadowy, sordid history is revealed, it becomes clear that many have a motive. However, all of them have alibis, save the ones that Detective Morgan begins to focus on.
This is a tale with Shakespearean misunderstandings, false leads, mistaken identities, and unexpected reveals. There are a lot of twists and turns, but the author keeps the story organized in the same way that a lawyer organizes an argument to be presented in court. In that way, Helms wisely obeys the first rule of storytelling: don't waste the reader's time. The plot moves steadily forward, save for one side trip in a later chapter to explore part of Morgan's backstory, and several unexpected surprises that encourage the reader to keep turning the pages. The result is an entertaining whodunnit with legal authenticity that keeps one guessing as it moves relentlessly toward a logical but unexpected denouement.