What do Mary Higgins Clark, David Brooks and Frank McCourt have in common? They all lived in the sprawling complex on the lower east side known as Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. It stretches from 14th Street to 23rd Street and is bounded by First Avenue on the west and Avenue C on the east. There are 80 acres of land and over eleven thousand apartments. It was planned and built in the early forties. World War II veterans were given priority. 

The 110 buildings are in a park-like environment of mostly plane trees. I’ve lived here for many years and consider myself very lucky. From my window I look north over the Oval, Stuyvesant Town’s central lawn. To the west I see the Empire State Building. At one time the lawns were sacrosanct, acres of undisturbed grass. Recently, there’s a hands on approach. Pets are allowed and Adirondack chairs dot the Oval lawn. At the center is a magnificent fountain. 

Graphic Lessons: What do a thirty-four-year old, a nine-year-old and an eighteen-year-old have in common? Murder. 

Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a  dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie. 

Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned the murder case at the prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed ? His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook?