Mystery review: Death Overdue

 

Title:  Death Overdue: A Haunted Library Mystery  (Cozy Mystery; 1st in Series)
Author: Allison Brook
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books (October 10, 2017). Hardcover: 336 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1683313861
E-Book ASIN: B06XW3MGZC
Source: Electronic ARC through Great Escapes Free Book Tours

Publisher's Blurb: 

Carrie Singleton is just about done with Clover Ridge, Connecticut until she’s offered a job as the head of programs and events at the spooky local library, complete with its own librarian ghost. Her first major event is a program presented by a retired homicide detective, Al Buckley, who claims he knows who murdered Laura Foster, a much-loved part-time library aide who was bludgeoned to death fifteen years earlier. As he invites members of the audience to share stories about Laura, he suddenly keels over and dies.

The medical examiner reveals that poison is what did him in and Carrie feels responsible for having surged forward with the program despite pushback from her director. Driven by guilt, Carrie’s determined to discover who murdered the detective, convinced it’s the same man who killed Laura all those years ago. Luckily for Carrie, she has a friendly, knowledgeable ghost by her side. But as she questions the shadows surrounding Laura’s case, disturbing secrets come to light and with each step Carrie takes, she gets closer to ending up like Al.

Now it’s due or die for Carrie in Death Overdue the delightful first in a new cozy series by Allison Brook. 

My Review: 

I really have to stop reading books set in libraries, because they all seem to be so much better funded than my library! Okay, seriously, I knew I had to read this when I saw it, because how could I not read a book with a librarian for a detective heroine, even if I did have some reservations about the ghost aspect. Despite an enjoyment of the Aunt Dimity mysteries, I'm not a big fan of the ghost mysteries that have become popular lately, but to my surprise, I found I didn't mind the ghost in this one at all. Mostly, my mind just accepted her as another character and allowed the willing suspension of disbelief so I could get on with the story.

The mystery in this case was decently constructed, and the writing solid, so that it was a quick, enjoyable read (due to a mix-up, I didn't get my copy until Friday, but I had no trouble sitting myself down and reading right through the book). It caught my interest from the first chapters, and if I at times got impatient with Carrie for doing stupid things (WHY did she keep telling people what she was finding out, even after that led to trouble and she was warned to keep it to herself?), I never stopped wanting to find out what she'd do next. I had a pretty good idea who the murderer was before she did, but the author managed to make me doubt myself with a couple of last-minute reveals about various characters, so there was never any doubt I had to read to the end.

There is a lot in this book that hints at an interesting backstory for Carrie, making her a character who seems worth the time to get to know. I hope I can check her out again in the future, as she makes many returns (I'd apologize for the library puns but...I won't).

 My Recommendation:

 This would fall under the heading of "beach reads" for me, I think. It was fun and had a good mystery, but had too much romance for my taste (so might be perfect for most cozy fans!). The writing could be a little tighter, but was never a significant distraction from the enjoyment of the story. Oh, and people working for under-funded libraries should beware of library-envy when reading this!

About The Author

Allison Brook is the pseudonym for Marilyn Levinson, who writes mysteries, romantic suspense and novels for kids. She lives on Long Island and enjoys traveling, reading, watching foreign films, doing Sudoku and dining out. She especially loves to visit with her grandchildren on FaceTime.

 

Author Links
Website: http://www.marilynlevinson.com
My Amazon page: http://amzn.to/K6Md1O
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marilyn.levinson.10?ref=ts&fref=ts
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/161602.Marilyn_Levinson
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarilynLevinson
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/marilev/

Purchase Links
Amazon   B&N

And this book has another great give-away! Enter to win a print copy of the book.
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FTC Disclosure: I received an electronic ARC of Death Overdue from Great Escapes Free Book Tours, and received nothing further from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."   

Librarians Vs. Robots: Flash Fiction Friday

Another wonderful random-draw prompt from Chuck Wendig, this time two lists of character-things. Draw one from each, and set them against each other. To my delight, my first roll got me the utter appropriate Librarians vs. Robots. In 999 words, then, my take on it. You know who's gonna win :)

Librarians vs. Robots

Abigail let her glasses slide down her nose so she could look over them at the patron who had just entered the library. Hers was a quiet and well-run library, and she did not allow troublemakers. This one looked like a troublemaker.

The patron approached the desk with the slightly awkward gait that gave away even the best robots. It was unaffected by the over-the-glasses gaze of the librarian, and made its request in a surprisingly human voice.

“Might I get a library card?”

Very polite. Abigail wasn’t fooled. Nor was she willing to discriminate against any potential borrower of books. She might see trouble coming, but even an obvious troublemaker could get a library card, and use it until he gave cause for action. She handed over the application.

“Fill this out. I’ll need to see photo ID and proof of address.”  In a way, this was a test. Robots didn’t get government ID cards. They had permanent ID numbers engraved on them. She’d heard that some were trying to pass as human, though, and presenting forged IDs. She sighed and rolled her eyes at Steve.

Steve rolled his eyes back. He’d worked as a bouncer at a nightclub before finding his calling as a librarian. His bouncer physique did wonders for keeping the teens in order, and he could spot a fake ID a half a mile off. When the robot reached for a wallet, Abigail stepped back and gestured for Steve to take her place. She busied herself sorting books. It was a handy occupation, appearing to take all of one’s focus while actually leaving her free to watch the library.

Steve glanced at the ID the robot handed him, and shook his head. “I’m sorry. This is not a valid ID card, Mr. Rochester.”

Abigail smiled to herself. Mr. Rochester. Give the machine credit for trying. Too bad Steve was more of a science fiction guy. Why did the robot want to pretend, anyway? As far as Abigail knew, there was no rule against giving a droid a library card. He just had to admit that was what he was, and show his ID number. Though proof of address might be a different matter.

About then, another patron approached the desk. This was a young woman, but Abigail had a strong feeling that the girl was another robot. Just what was going on here, anyway?

Steve was directing his patron to the reading room, without issuing the card. Abigail’s patron wanted to find books on tropical fish, and she spent a couple of minutes directing the droid to the right section.

Three more patrons were lined up at the desk when she finished, all robots. All were polite, all were terribly demanding, though they did have a dampening effect on the teens.

Only at closing time, when they all filed quietly out of the library, did Abigail realize what they were doing.

“They’re studying our jobs!” The staff had gathered in the back room to discuss the invasion. “Someone has decided we’re expendable.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Sally said. “I mean, I guess they could sort and shelve, and spare us the backaches. I need my job, though.” She stopped talking and looked thoughtful.

“Right,” Abigail said. “But I’d like to see one of them trying to do a reader’s advisory for a 9-year-old who loves Hank the Cowdog and needs something that is just like it only at a higher reading level.”

Steve looked thoughtful, but he didn’t say anything until all the others had vented their worry and their contempt for the machines.

“How long do you think it will take for each of them to read a section of the library? And they won’t forget any of it.”

***

For the next three days the robots came, and no one knew what to do. They never broke the rules, so they couldn’t be asked to leave. And then the memo came from higher up: the robots were to be integrated into their staff. The bosses made it sound like this would be a great help to the humans, but they could read the handwriting on the wall.

If only the robots weren’t so damned polite, Abigail thought. If they would slip up even once, they could be managed.

And then came the preschool visit.

Classes came fairly often from the local grade schools and preschools, to learn about all the wonders a library could offer. Abigail ordinarily handled those visits, but this time, she professed to be too busy reorganizing their reference system according to suggestions made by the robots (which really were were good suggestions, even if the staff did resent the source).

She assigned “Mr. Rochester” to handle the preschool visit. The boss had, after all, assured her that a week was sufficient time for the robots to learn everything they needed to know.

“Three classes?” Sally asked. “I thought you never allowed preschools to bring more than one class at a time.”

Abigail shrugged. “They say these new employees can handle anything.”

***
The result became known in robotics literature as the “toddler effect,” and it was two centuries before programming reached a level of sophistication that could adjust to the randomness of toddler behavior, multiplied by 40.

In the short term, it took Abigail and her human crew a week to restore order to the Children’s Room. The robots could have done it faster, and without the aching muscles, but they had fled, and refused to return. All but Mr. Rochester. That unfortunate droid had been decommissioned by a particularly inventive 4-year-old, using her library card, a board book, and, to Abigail’s regret, one of the library’s pet goldfish.

They held a funeral for the goldfish, and presented the budding engineer with a handful of stickers as a prize for her creativity. Abigail caught Steve high-fiving the kid. “My niece,” Steve said.

After that, the librarians went back to running the library in their own quiet way.

***

You don't mess with the Ninja Librarian

Picture Book Review: Librarian on the Roof!

Once again I have been lured from the paths of Middle Grade fiction (or adult) into the world of picture books! I saw this while looking at fellow Book-Elf M.G. King's books, and simply had to have it.

Title: Librarian on the Roof!
Author: M. G. King   Illustrator: Stephen Gilpin
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Co., 2010; 32 pages

Publisher's Summary:
When RoseAleta Laurell begins her new job at the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas, she is surprised that the children of the town think the library is for adults. She vows to raise the money for a children's section and spends a week living and working on the library roof, even surviving a dangerous storm. With the help of the entire town, RoseAleta raises over $39,000 from within the community and across the country.

Today if you look through the front window of the Eugene Clark Library, you will see shelves stacked full with children's books and tables and chairs just the right size. You will see artwork on the walls, and a row of busy computers. Best of all, you will always find crowds of children who love to read and learn inside the walls of the oldest library in Texas.

My Review:
As I said above, when I saw this book I just had to have it. RoseAleta Laurell is a librarian after my own heart, and one the Ninja Librarian would be proud to call a colleague!  The story is pretty simple, and fully summed up above, and it's as delightful as it sounds. It is non-fiction, but reads like a flight of the author's imagination, and is charmingly told and wonderfully illustrated. I very much enjoyed Stephen Gilpin's illustrations, and thought they complemented the story perfectly.

There is a full page (for the adults) at the beginning which tells the true story of RoseAleta Laurell's efforts to revive the library in Lockhart, Texas in 2000.

Recommendation:
I first recommend this for every librarian I know, because it's just wonderful. But I'll also recommend for anyone, adult or child, who loves books or loves their library.

Full Disclosure: I bought Librarian on the Roof! with my own money and of my own volition, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

###

And...taking care of business!

Don't miss the Goodreads BookElves Anthology Giveaway!  

Also: Check out Read Tuesday next week! Hundreds of great deals of books--it's Black Friday for Books!

And last, but by no means least, be sure to enter the drawing for an ebook of Halitor the Hero!
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Unpacking the new books:

Open the big heavy box!

Remove many layers of paper packing.

Ooo! Books! Pretty!

{Big Smile}

Fully restocked supply shelf! Ready to take orders! Special pre-order price is good until Dec. 10!

 

Ninja Librarians

Just stumbled on a whole bunch of YouTube videos on the "Ninja Librarian" theme (though none seem to be anyplace as . . . interesting. . . as Skunk Corners).  Thought I'd share a couple.  I'll see if I can figure out how to embed a video, while I'm at it :)

And:

I like this one:

Just for fun!  I guess I'm not the first to put the two ideas together. 

The Ninja Librarian Speaks!

I recently received a package via very special delivery.  Inside I found the following communique, which I ( thanks to far too much exposure to Geoffrey Chaucer at an impressionable age) have chosen to title. . . 

THE LIBRARIAN'S TALE

-->

Up to now, I have allowed young Alice to narrate events in our town of Skunk Corners, and for the most part she has done an admirable job.  On deep reflection, however, I have determined to set straight the record on a few points.

Young Alice has an unfortunate tendency to depict me as both mysterious and, there is no other word for it, stuffy.  I confess to the former, as both certain vows I took and long years of habit render me reticent about my personal life and history, and disinclined to explain myself.  The charge of stuffiness, however, I most heartily deny.  I am an educated man, of course, and inevitably I do speak as such.  There is nothing wrong with that, and indeed I believe any attempt to speak and act otherwise would render me absurd.  But to be formal is not to be stiff or stuffy.

That point settled, I wish to recount my experience of my arrival in Skunk Corners, as young Alice has very clearly expressed her own and the town’s reaction to my arrival. 

Skunk Corners did take me very much by surprise.  Rather, on my arrival I saw much what I expected: a collection of ignorant people bent on demonstrating their ignorance.  I responded as I had been taught, withholding judgment only from Alice, of whom I had been told something.  I consider this forbearance to have been fortunate and highly rewarded.

For I did know something of the town before arriving.  And I knew that the school teacher was a young woman who dressed and acted as a boy.  I ought to have assumed her to be coarse and uneducated, and our first meeting certainly did little to change that idea.

And yet.  She went out of her way to warn me of the welcome planned for me, and for that I would give her a chance, despite her coarse appearance and dreadful abuse of the language.

Young Alice herself has recorded the outcome of that decision, and you can conclude that in the end I found something different than the crude collection of cruder individuals I had anticipated.  What Alice has not shared, simply because she does not know it, and I have been disinclined to tell her, is the manner of my passing my first night and morning in Skunk Corners.

I was all eyes and ears when I stepped off the train in this town that was to be my home for the next months.  I have never told Alice, nor anyone else in Skunk Corners, but this was my first time out West.  All my other assignments had been in the larger cities back East, as indeed are most Ninja Librarian assignments.  It is in those cities, with their gangs on both sides of the law, that there is often the greatest need for a librarian who is both educated and skilled in the ways of the Ninja.

It had been some thirty years earlier that the heads of the Society had gotten the idea to build libraries in the new towns springing up out West.  It was only now that they were realizing that some of those libraries needed to be staffed by the Society.

So there I was, after what seemed a lifetime riding trains of ever-shrinking dimensions, walking down the street of my first Western town.

It wasn’t much to look at.  Depot, church, Mercantile, teashop, bank, tavern, school, library, and a City Hall with a fine façade hiding a shoddy pine shack.

I noticed everything that day.  No one was expecting me, but a number of idle men hung about the depot, so I introduced myself.

“Good day, gentlemen.  I have come to serve as your librarian.  You may call me Tom.”  They didn’t, of course, call me any such thing.  Two nodded, which I took as a greeting, and one spat on the platform, which I did not.  A fourth called me something else entirely which I will not repeat here or anywhere.

Somehow, by the time I had crossed the platform and stepped into the dust of what they called Main Street, word had spread through the settlement, and every porch and doorway bore a watcher, not one of whom deigned to offer a greeting.  At the end of the street, the library and school glared at each other across the dusty thoroughfare, just as the school children gazed at me in open hostility.

Of their teacher I saw nothing at that juncture, nor did I much wish to.

When finally I entered the library and closed the door behind me, I sagged with relief.  In other places I had been librarian, a small violent element prevented a peaceful majority from using the library as they wished.  In this gods-forsaken town, it seemed every resident wished me gone.

Or dead.

The thought did not fill me with either joy or hope that I would make a difference, though I would fulfill my vows and make every effort.

The contemplation of the interior of my rooms did little to comfort me.  If the Society had thought to include a stove in their design for the living quarters, there was no indication of such now.  Only an open hearth greeted me as the means to heat both myself and my meals.  A stale smell of untouched books and dead air pervaded every corner.

I am quite aware that many of my new neighbors had lived and possibly even thrived in such conditions all their lives, less the books, of course.  But, as a city man, I had a problem.

I had always boarded until now.  I knew nothing of cookery, and while I felt confident that I could boil water and prepare the kind of simple repast to which I was meant to limit myself, I had no idea how to go about doing so on an open fire.

Thus, when I met Young Alice in the back entry of the library that night, it was not only that I had heard her enter and meant to discover the meaning of the intrusion.  I was also escaping the clouds of smoke I had generated, first by kindling the fire without opening the damper, and then by burning my toast beyond all recognition.  The warning which Alice delivered meant less to me at that time than my fear that I must starve in this forsaken outpost beyond the fringes of civilization.

However, by dint of much effort, I managed to produce boiling water and make a cup of tea.  I made no further attempt to toast my bread, but rendered it edible by dipping it in the tea, and so contrived to still the demands of my interior until morning, when I was forced to do it all again.

Thus, you see, I was in no mood to put up with ill treatment the next day when the townsfolk gathered to send me back where I came from, upright or in a box.  Had I been better fed, I might have been less quick to respond aggressively.

That, I suspect, would have been a pity.  Some towns do require a firm hand.

This narrative was signed simply, "Tom."