Local writer Jeannette Cooperman has published her first murder mystery, through the U.K.’s leading digital-only press, Endeavour.

“A Circumstance of Blood”  is set in a private boys’ school on the Missouri River bluffs.

Cooperman, a staff writer and former editor of St. Louis Magazine who now resides in Waterloo, has been impressing local, national and international readers for years, first as an award-winning narrative and investigative journalist, and as the author of several nonfiction books and a slew of award-winning narrative and investigative journalism articles. Among her accolades are being named the 2012 Great Plains Magazine Writer of the Year by St. Louis Business Journal.

Cooperman is already hard at work on her second mystery. She said she finds inspiration many places, often in the printed words of others:

“People whose psychology intrigues me, deep questions about life that I can’t answer but love to think about, my workday job in journalism, everything I read,” she said.

Her most recent book, “A Circumstance of Blood,” was inspired about an article she wrote about the growing heroin epidemic.

“The medical examiner mentioned a rare practice called ‘flashblood’ and it all unfolded from there,” she said.

Cooperman holds a doctorate in American studies from Saint Louis University and has been published in O: The Oprah Winfrey Magazine; The Bark; Utne Reader; the Boston Globe; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Glamour and Seventeen.

“A Circumstance of Blood” follows the story of a St. Louis-area boys’ school that serves as the perfect refuge for students too wild, eccentric or fragile for a regular prep school — and for teachers eager to forget their own pasts.
“There are tons of references to SLU, O’Connell’s Pub and other St. Louis places,” Cooperman said.

The peace this school offers shatters when the idealistic Jesuit head of school, Father Colin McAvoy, is pressured to accept a troubled wealthy boy and another student is found dead of what appears at first blush to be a heroin overdose.

“In the end, the book’s about empathy — both the compassionate and the manipulative sort — and the damage done when people feel they must lie to those they love,” Cooperman said.

“A Circumstance of Blood” can be purchased as an e-book through Amazon and is available through Kindle Unlimited.

Cooperman lives in an almost-100-year-old house in Waterloo, with her husband, historian Andrew Cooperman, and dog, Louie.

For more on Cooperman and her many works, visit online at JeannetteCooperman.WordPress.com.

What’s the best thing about being a writer? For Cooperman, “the real best thing is having somebody connect to words you’ve written and carry the conversation forward. Or, with fiction, talk about your characters as though they know them.”