As she teaches a writing course at a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, bartender Ivy Seidel investigates her star student's crime.
Stock Character Prison guard Sergeant Tocco, ''a man with a salt-and-pepper mustache, three stripes on his sleeve and a Styrofoam cup of coffee, almost lost in his hairy hand.''
Body Count Four.
Bottom Line Though the plot is gratifyingly complex, Ivy is curiously bland and almost unlikable.
