Minneapolis writer Kathleen West’s new novel is fun. Her mom approves.

If your name is Kathleen West and you’re part of a class action suit or you’ve been mailed a coupon for new gutters or offered an exciting opportunity for a time-share in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., there’s a decent chance the Minneapolis writer who shares your name has your mail.

“I have never met a Kathleen West in person, but I have a lot of emails for other Kathleens,” said the ebullient West, over a Starbucks oat milk latte. “One time I got one that said I was named in a will and here are the sensitive financial details. So I thought: What would happen if I actually showed up at the family dinner I was mistakenly invited to?”

That notion inspired West’s witty mystery “Making Friends Can Be Murder,” in which all of the most important characters are named Sarah Jones.

“I started thinking, ‘Who would join a group of same-namers? What kind of connections would they have?” asked West, who found similar groups on the internet. “One Kathleen West was a Josten’s yearbook rep, so teachers would email me and say, ‘I have a problem with page 37.’ I felt very connected to them, since I’m a teacher, too.”

Which got her thinking about what might happen if she actually met others with her name. The Sarahs in “Making Friends Can Be Murder” include a teenager who forms a club as part of her “Sarah Jones Project,” two teachers, a nanny and a retired lawyer. Initially, they participate in group texts and yarn bombs but, when one of them is murdered, they decide to crack the case.

West helps us keep track of her Sarahs by identifying them by their ages: Thirty-nine, Thirty-four, Sixty-nine, etc. What with bodies mounting and the FBI questioning them, they have their hands full, but they have nothing on their author, who’s married to attorney Dan West, has two sons and teaches seventh grade at St. Anthony Middle School, in addition to writing four novels (previous books include “Are We There Yet?” and “Home or Away”).

Her mom has described West, 47, as “intense” and she does not disagree.

“It’s a pro and con about me as a person,” said West. “I’m pretty rigid and disciplined and productive.”

That means early bedtimes and wake-up times.

“I just get up in the morning before work and make myself sit there and write. If I have a deadline, it’s 4:45-6:15,” said West. “I can’t stay up past 9 at night. It’s always been that way. If I’m out with a friend, they know. I’ve left concerts at halftime before. Usually, I have a word count I have to hit — 1,000 words or whatever. If I hit it, I give myself a sticker.”

Those stickers will sound familiar to anyone who had an elementary teacher for a parent (Hi, Mom!). West keeps them in a notebook, where they mark her progress in the same way they can mark a student’s. Even when she’s not actually distributing stickers, West is thinking of them.

“I don’t get an actual sticker but I’m working with a coach who’s helping me become a better teacher, and I’ll sometimes say, ‘Did I win a gold star for today?’ Which makes me sound a little neurotic. Which is maybe accurate,” jokes West.

Even with stickers as motivation, writing “Making Friends Can Be Murder” was not as breezy as its cozy, jokey tone might suggest. It was tricky to create a character who’s a likable murderer, for instance. And, although none of the Sarahs is exactly like West, one does share a difficult biographical detail: the loss of a brother.

“The hardest part for me was my own mental state. My brother had died, and I had a lot of stops and starts, things that didn’t work,” said West.

The writer thought about giving up, even asking her agent if it would be possible to return her advance, but the discipline of sitting down to write every morning, whether or not she felt like it, helped her finish a book she’s now “really happy with.”

Another person who’s happy with it? West’s mom, Miriam Williams, with whom she’ll be taking a Portuguese cruise this summer.

“My third book, she was like, ‘It’s OK.’ Or I think she said it wasn’t her favorite,” said West. “She loved these characters. I think she felt my second and third novels were too serious but this one’s lighter. So I went ahead and dedicated it to her.”

She also thinks the late Sister Marie Théresè Conaty would like “Making Friends Can Be Murder.” With her name slightly altered, she is a prominent character in the book, a no-nonsense administrator at Sacred Heart Academy. The academy resembles Visitation High School in Mendota Heights, where West matriculated from kindergarten through high school and subsequently taught. She hadn’t planned for the nun to be in the book but, when teenage Sarah was sent to the principal’s office, suddenly Conaty was there, too.

“I think she would be very tickled by it. She was from Kentucky, she had a Southern drawl, and she called everyone ‘honey’ because she didn’t remember names,” said West. “Everyone adored her.”

The sister could perhaps be described with a phrase that became a mantra for “Making Friends Can Be Murder.” When West’s editor Kerry Donovan read the first draft, she pronounced it “optimistic, quirky and fun.” West, who was thrilled, had a T-shirt made with that phrase on it, reminding her of the cast of Sarah Joneses she created.

“I haven’t thought it through or pitched my editor on any ideas. My agent advised me to write something different because we wouldn’t know if a sequel was possible until this book came out and we saw how it did,” said West, who’s at work on a caper that involves NASA. “But my dream is to write a series. I love these people, and I would really like to revisit them.”

Making Friends Can Be Murder

By: Kathleen West.

Publisher: Berkley, 401 pages.

Event: 7 p.m. June 10, Pryes Brewing Co., 1401 W. River Rd. N., Mpls. Free but registration required.