Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Quiet, please, for more murder and mayhem at the Briar Creek Library. Library director Lindsey Norris has taken care to separate her job from her enthusiastic backing of Ms. Cole, head of circulation, who’s running for mayor. Unfortunately, the present mayor, furious about facing competition for a position he’s long held, makes a scene at the library denouncing Ms. Cole as too old for the job. Mayor Hensen is delighted when a body is found in Ms. Cole’s car, which is parked in the library lot, and eager to see her arrested. Since Lindsey has plenty of past experience with murder, she begins her own investigation with the help of her husband, Sully, and plenty of her friends. At first there seems to be no connection between the dead man and Ms. Cole, but his eventual identification by his business partner as Henry Lewis, to whom Ms. Cole was briefly engaged almost 40 years ago, sends her right to the head of the suspect line. The mayor and his cronies show no shame in exploiting the situation; Ms. Cole, for her part, wavers between continuing her campaign in high style and considering dropping out for the good of the town. Lindsay revisits both Ms. Cole’s activist past and Lewis’ recent problems to winkle out a killer with an unusually well-hidden motive. Plenty of well-defined characters add charm and bite to a thorny mystery. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In McKinlay’s diverting 12th Library Lover’s mystery (after 2020’s One for the Books), library director Lindsey Norris and her colleagues are supporting the campaign of library circulation head Eugenia Cole for mayor of Briar Creek, Conn., while coping with the incumbent, Mayor Hensen , who has done little for the library and resents Ms. Cole’s candidacy. When a body is found in Ms. Cole’s car trunk, the mayor attempts to torpedo her campaign by insinuating that she’s the killer and attempting to have her arrested. Lindsey learns that the victim, Henry Lewis, was a former fiancé of Ms. Cole and involved in a controversial potential sale of his successful Nana’s Cookies company. In addition, Henry was opposed to the sale of family property to a developer, which may have placed him on the wrong side of his nephew, Lenny Lewis. McKinlay’s solid understanding of small-town personalities and the rallying of loyal library patrons and employees to Ms. Cole’s aid provide satisfying reading. Both new and faithful fans will find much to enjoy. Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Nov.)