Welcome to my stop on the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour for Murder off U Street (The Academic Mom Mysteries) by Jacque Rosman. Stop by each blog on the tour for interviews, guest posts, spotlights, reviews and more!
Murder off U Street (The Academic Mom Mysteries)
by Jacque Rosman
Murder off U Street (The Academic Mom Mysteries)
Mystery/Amateur Sleuth
2nd in Series
Setting – Washington D.C.
Publisher : Speaking Volumes, LLC (February 12, 2025)
Paperback : 232 pages
Unruly kids, a meddling in-law, and coverups.
Can this college prof and harried mom uncover
the truth behind a string of suspicious deaths?
Washington D.C. Cara Knight needs more hours in the day. Spending half her time chasing after two toddlers, the assistant professor hopes her hand-picked student’s practicum with the Metro Police will boost her bid for tenure. But the promising young woman soon loses the position for interfering in a homicide investigation.
When Cara discovers her protégée’s body in similar circumstances, she hunts for a connection while struggling to survive the nasty new dean’s scrutiny. With the help of her sidekick mother-in-law, can Cara chase down the culprit before the next victim lands in the morgue?
Murder off U Street is the gripping second book in the Academic Mom Mysteries. If you like relatable characters, high stakes with a splash of humor, and exploring the nation’s capital, then you’ll love Jacque Rosman’s new riveting read.
Author Guest Post: Creating the Academic Mom Mysteries
Jacque Rosman/Jacqueline Corcoran
The question readers often want to know is, “Where do you get your ideas?” For my Academic Mom Mysteries series, the answer lies in the intersection of my professional background and my personal life.
When Real Life Inspires Fiction
I’m one of those authors who announced to my mother when I was seven years old that I wanted to be an author. I was already enrapt with how authors could create a world that I could join through reading their books. By the time I was 20 and still in college, I finished my first novel. However, after I graduated, I found, while trying to waitress by night and write by day that just because I was able to finish novels didn’t mean that they would necessarily be published. I would have to find a career and get out of the waitressing rut. I discovered social work and found my calling.
After I graduated with a Masters in Social Work and returned from a six-month working holiday in New Zealand, I was offered two jobs. One of them was for the Austin Police Department Victim Services unit. I chose that job because I was interested in branching out into mystery writing. Before that time, I had mainly written for children and adolescents. Those two and a half years at the Austin Police Department provided me with a front-row seat to how law enforcement operates and how certain victims could be easily overlooked or dismissed.
Where I End and Cara Begins
Cara Knight and I share numerous similarities—we’re both social work professors with two children living in Northern Virginia. We both understand the academic politics of university life and the constant juggling act that working parenthood requires.
But Cara is braver than I am and plays faster and looser than typical professional boundaries allow. For that reason, I chose to write under a pen name to draw a line between my professional identify and so that my social work colleagues and students wouldn’t see me as being unethical.
Drawing from my own life provided authenticity to Cara’s daily challenges. I know exactly how it feels to have work to tend to while young children demand every ounce of attention and energy. I’ve had to explain to a dean why I took a break from presenting at conferences—because traveling to a conference meant leaving them for a few days at a time when they depended on me so much for their care and well-being, and my husband’s sudden work travel often trumped my own. We didn’t live near family. Who would take care of our children if we were both gone? An anecdote that shows the challenges involved was the very first time I left for a conference when my son was three. The Amtrak train was just pulling out of the Alexandria train station when my husband called and said that he was taking our son to the emergency room. Apparently, he had been doing tricks off one of our living room chairs before preschool when he landed wrong and hurt his neck. (He ended up being fine.)
Fictionalizing these experiences helped me process my own work-life balance struggles. In some ways, Cara has become my alter ego—facing challenges similar to mine but with more dramatic stakes and satisfying resolutions, while playing up the humor inherent in these situations. I struggled with the mundanity of day-to-day child care and routines, and fantasized how great it would be to have an exciting life fighting crime. What surprised me was how writing about this balance became therapeutic.
When I started writing the series, there was something almost meta about writing a character who struggles with work-life balance while trying to maintain that balance in my own life. Some days, I was writing a scene where Cara rushes to pick up her children from preschool only to realize I needed to leave immediately to pick up my own children. Art imitates life, and occasionally life imitates art.
When I began the Academic Mom Mysteries, I wanted to portray the reality of modern motherhood—not the sanitized version often seen in fiction where children conveniently disappear when the plot demands it. Cara’s children interrupt her investigations. They get sick on days when critical interviews are scheduled. They need attention when she’s trying to piece together evidence. These aren’t plot obstacles I created for dramatic tension; they’re the reality of parenting while pursuing any demanding career.
The “mom-detective” isn’t new in mystery fiction, but I wanted Cara to bring something different to this tradition. Her academic background in social work isn’t just a convenient occupation—it provides her with specific skills and insights that make her investigations unique. Her perspective as a professional who studies systems of care and support gives her investigations a different angle than the typical amateur sleuth.
Why These Stories Matter
Mysteries provide entertainment, but they can also illuminate social issues without becoming didactic. Through Cara’s investigations, I can explore how victims from different backgrounds receive different levels of attention from authorities. I can examine how academic research intersects with real-world problems. I can showcase a woman balancing multiple demanding roles without sacrificing her intelligence or compassion.
In MURDER OFF U STREET, these elements converge when one of Cara’s students—a young woman researching intimate partner violence response—becomes a victim herself. The case allows me to explore institutional responses to violence while showing how Cara’s academic expertise and personal determination drive her to seek justice when official channels fall short.
I believe readers connect with Cara because they recognize pieces of themselves in her story. We’ve all felt overlooked or underestimated at times. Cara, arriving in a minivan, could be dismissed as just another suburban mother. But that meant people let down their guard and gave her more information to work with. We’ve all struggled to balance competing priorities. We’ve all wished we could right wrongs we witness. Through Cara, readers can hopefully experience the satisfaction of seeing justice served while acknowledging the complex reality of the systems designed to provide that justice.
As I continue developing this five-book series, I remain grateful that I’ve been able to take my own experiences—both professional and personal—and transform them into material. The Academic Mom Mysteries might be fiction, but the emotions, challenges, and triumphs within them come from a very real place.
About Jacque Rosman
When Jacque Rosman (Jacqueline Corcoran) isn’t crafting whodunits, romances, or textbooks, she’s navigating her own commute through four states to her professor job, dealing with her rescue chihuahua’s separation anxiety, and embracing, like her amateur sleuth, the beautiful chaos of family life with her husband and two children outside Washington D.C. MURDER IN GEORGETOWN and MURDER OFF U STREET kicks off the Academic Mom Mysteries, bringing readers a relatable humorous heroine who solves crimes between grading papers and making dinner.
Author Links
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/JacquelineCorcoranAuthor/
GoodReads https://www.goodreads.com/?ref=nav_home
Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-corcoran-362b5124/
eBook On Sale Now
Print Book On Sale Now
Enter the giveaway
Murder off U Street TOUR PARTICIPANTS
April 2 – Ascroft, eh? – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
April 2 – Jody’s Bookish Haven – SPOTLIGHT
April 2 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
April 3 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – REVIEW
April 3 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
April 4 – Novels Alive – REVIEW
April 4 – MJB Reviewers – SPOTLIGHT
April 4 – Boys’ Mom Reads! – REVIEW
April 5 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT
April 5 – Reading Is My SuperPower – CHARACTER GUEST POST
April 5 – Books, Ramblings, and Tea – SPOTLIGHT
April 6 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – AUTHOR GUEST POST
April 6 – Frugal Freelancer – SPOTLIGHT
April 7 – Read Your Writes Book Reviews – CHARACTER INTERVIEW
April 7 – Deal Sharing Aunt – SPOTLIGHT
Have you signed up to be a Tour Host?
Click Here to Find Details and Sign Up Today!
Want to Book a Tour?
Click Here
Thank you so much for hosting me on the book tour. I enjoyed writing about my inspirations!
You’re welcome! Thanks for stopping!