Dead Politician Society - Robin Spano

After the mayor falls down dead in the middle of a speech, a clandestine student society claims credit for his demise. Claire Vengel is given her first undercover assignment: to pose as a student and penetrate the society. A streetwise amateur mechanic, Clare finds university a foreign land, and she has trouble creating an in with the suspects. She quickly alienates a popular professor and loses the respect of police superiors. When another politician is killed, Clare kicks herself into high gear. She forges friendships with students and makes inroads into the secret society. As the body count rises, Clare realizes that the murderer she has to unmask is someone she has come to consider a friend. She only hopes that the friend doesn't unmask her first.

I received Dead Politician Society through the Goodreads First Reads program. The book was released in hardcover on September 1 of this year, and is to my knowledge Robin Spano's first novel.

Clare, the main character in Dead Politician Society, is a highly immature young woman who behaves irresponsibly throughout most of the novel. However, it is entertaining to read about her many mishaps and attempts to impress her superiors. While Spano's writing is not particularly stylistically impressive, I enjoyed reading the book and the plot twists kept me reading. The characters were neither completely flat nor well fleshed out, but somewhere in between. Likewise, the plot was not completely unoriginal, but neither was it particularly fresh and new. As a whole, the book is clearly a first novel, and met my expectations as such. While I wouldn't rush out to buy the next Claire Vengel novel (I assume from the cover that there will be more), I would probably pick it up at the library, and I would look forward to seeing Spano improve her craft.