Twelve Angry Librarians: 07/15/20

Twelve Angry Librarians by Miranda James is the eighth book in the Cat in the Stacks mystery series. For the last couple months Charlie Harris has been working as the interim library director at Athena College. One of the people applying for the job is a former MLIS classmate, one who Charlie has nothing good to say about. He's also there to give the keynote address, only to end up dead midway through.

Most of the mystery series I read that feature libraries and librarians, take a rather rose tinted view of both. Miranda James presents the hard work and the seedier side of the career. This volume builds on the sad truth that there are some men in the field who are misogynistic leches.

The question then is, who among the dead's past and current cohorts hated him enough to kill him? Charlie, who has had a physical run-in with the deceased is on the list of suspects.

I haven't been to a library conference but I have enough friends who have to have heard first hand accounts of harassment and worse at them. So far, I'm not aware of any murders happening at them, though. Regardless, I found the darker details of this fictional conference rang true and made for a compelling, albeit gut wrenching at times, read.

The ninth book is Six Cats a Slayin' (2018).

Five stars

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