Death Overdue: 06/11/21

Death Overdue by Allison Brook is the start of the Haunted Library mystery series. Set in Clover Ridge, Connecticut, it follows Carrie Singleton as she takes on her new role as head of programs. Her first event is a lecture by a retired homicide detective, Al Buckley, about his final (and unsolved) case. Minutes into the event he ends up dead, poisoned.

Like Brooklyn Wainright in the Bibliophile mysteries, Carrie has to deal with a saboteur. She knows who is doing it but it takes her a while to get proof and to resolve the situation. Fortunately Carrie is mature enough to handle things with aplomb (something Brooklyn takes volumes to manage). Her nemesis here, then, is hopefully a one book only source of red herrings and other distractions.

Helping Carrie is the ghost of a former librarian. Her death frankly sounds suspicious to me, and I have to wonder if it won't be the source of a later investigation. While the ghost is there to offer advice and encouragement, she's fortunately not set up to be source of infinite insights and clues.

With this mystery being hinged on a cold case and a building with a long history of its own, I'm reminded fondly of two other mystery series, the Lighthouse Library Mysteries by Eva Gates and the newly started Witch Way Librarian series by Angela M. Sanders.

The next book is Read and Gone (2018).

Four stars

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