About this item
The murder of a moderator for a school competition spells trouble for Portland P.I. partners and moms Maya Kendrick and Sandra Wallage . . .. Twelve-year-old Rocco Fanelli is a spelling bee champ in the making. He's the odds-on favorite to win the local middle-school bee and go on to the regionals, the state, and ultimately the nationals. Which is why someone is trying to intimidate him to drop out with a threatening note in his locker. Rocco's concerned parents hire Maya and Sandra to uncover the culprit and ensure their son's safety.. But the competition turns killer when a high school teacher who's running the bee, clearly favoring certain students, is found dead in the school supply closet. Sandra had already confronted Ellie Lambert over unfairly grading her son Ryan - which now makes her a suspect.
About the Author
Rick Copp was two years out of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts when he was tapped at 24 years old to become a staff writer on the enormously popular NBC sitcom The Golden Girls in 1988. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, especially for a boy from Bar Harbor, Maine, who grew up dreaming of living underneath the famous Hollywood sign, a dream that became a reality soon after his arrival in Los Angeles.
He spent the next five years writing for a number of series including the critically acclaimed and commercially successsful hits NBC's Wings, FOX's Flying Blind and HBO's Dream On.
In 1995, he teamed up with screenwriter Laurice Elehwany, who wrote the popular MaCauley Culkin comedy drama My Girl and together they co-wrote the big screen TV remake The Brady Bunch Movie, which was a major box office hit for Paramount Pictures. This led to many more feature writing assignments for Universal, Warner Brothers, Imagine Entertainment, The Jim Henson Company among others as well as uncredited rewrites on Howard Stern's Private Parts and The Flintstones: Viva Rock Vegas.
But Rick has also stayed very busy in television co-creating and executive producing a campy, fun TV revival of the '80s David Hasselhoff hit Team Knight Rider where he also played the recurring role of Clayton the Chef. He's written for a wide variety of series including Secret Agent Man, Barbershop, executive produced by Ice Cube, and Jack of All Trades starring Bruce Campbell. He's created and written many television pilots for most of the major networks including ABC, CBS, MTV, Lifetime, USA, Nickoleon and Logo including two produced one hour prime time mystery pilots Homewood P.I. for CBS starring Tony Danza and Soccer Moms for ABC starring Kristin Davis. Recently he's written five episodes of the late night Cinemax anthology crime series Femme Fatales under the pen name Richard Hollis, which also provided him the opportunity to return to acting playing a befuddled professor in three episodes. Acting is a hobby Rick still loves to indulge.
Rick has always kept a strong presence in children's television programming as well, which began with him co-writing the popular animated feature Scooby Doo and the Witch's Ghost. Its success led to him writing multiple episodes of the Cartoon Network smash hit Teen Titans as well as story editing the first season of Warner Brothers' Loonatics Unleashed. His passion in life is traveling so it was a special treat for him to work abroad on another successful animated series called Chi Rho -The Secret produced by Cross Media and broadcast by KiKa in Germany.
In 2001, Rick decided to fulfill another goal and write a mystery novel. He had been playing around with a character named Jarrod Jarvis, a former child star on a hit '80s sitcom called Go to Your Room! who had his very own catch phrase, "Baby, don't