I am grateful for the teachers who have been a part of my life.

In grade school, my mother taught spelling and a couple of other subjects and, while I seemed to resent her presence at the time, I also was glad she was around.

In high school, my favorite teacher was, and remains, Theresa Harbin who taught me how to read. By that I mean how to understand what an author meant, how the subtle aspects of a story can reverberate throughout the plot, how a character’s name can have myriad purposes.

I also salute my friends, Nancee and Patrice, whose careers as first-grade teachers set the course for many people, and the many spouses of my friends who have chosen this career path.

And a big salute to my friends’ mothers who were teachers.

I was thinking about the impact that teachers have on our lives while I was reading the intriguing debut Sacrifice Fly by Tim O’Mara.

In O’Mara’s novel, Raymond Donne has become a teacher in Brooklyn after leaving the city’s police force. But Raymond isn’t just any teacher—he’s very involved with his students’ lessons in the classroom and the real world situations they must face. He’s been known to try to save a student from an abusive home and then heading off to teach the intricate beauty of Walt Whitman’s poetry, as I said in my review.

In Sacrifice Fly, Ray gets eighth grader Frankie Rivas a complete scholarship to a private school because of the student’s impressive skills on the baseball diamond. But Frankie’s scholarship also hinges on keeping up his grades, so Ray is concerned when the student has been missing from school for more than a week. But this is more than a truant child. While searching for Frankie, Raymond becomes involved in a murder investigation.

While, fortunately, no teacher of mine had to make the hard decisions that Ray does. At least not that I know of.

But Sacrifice Fly made me remember the inspiration that a teacher can give to students, how a teacher can make learning such a wonderful thing.

While there are a slew of academic mysteries, there also are a number in which a teacher is the sleuth.

First, let’s start with Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote fame. Before she became an author of detective fiction under the name J. B. Fletcher, Jessica Fletcher was a teacher.

Mignon F. Ballard’s  latest series features first grade teacher, Miss Dimple Kilpatrick, during the years of World War II.

Sarah R. Shaber’s first series featured North Carolina history professor Simon Shaw.

Gillian Roberts wrote 14 highly entertaining novels about Amanda Pepper, a high school teacher in Philadelphia

Sujata Massey’s lovely novels about Rei Shimura looked at the cultural differences that her Japanese-American character saw while working as an English teacher in Japan.

This is just a short list of the mysteries featuring teachers. Tell us your favorite.

I’d say that Tim O'Mara's Raymond Donne is in good company.