A Controversial Cover: 10/12/24

A Controversial Cover by Lorna Barrett and Cassandra Campbell (Narrator) (2024) is the eighteenth book in the Booktown mystery series. A famous children's author is murdered in her car after a less than stellar appearance at the public library. Tricia and her boyfriend, David, find her body.

Tricia's only compulsion to solve this particular murder is to make sure her boyfriend isn't fired from his library job. Given how scarce library jobs are he's damn lucky to have it, especially considering he hasn't even finished his MLIS.

Instead of focusing on Lauren Barker's death it seems much of this volume is instead preoccupied with family drama. Mostly Tricia's sister seems to be dictating her life more and more. She's also rather chilly to David, partially because she doesn't want to share her big secret (being half of Nigela Riseta Associates). More broadly, Angela has just gotten used to always having her way and Tricia never pushes back.

For every new project NRA tackles, Tricia seems to lose more of her agency. By now she must be in her early to mid fifties. Even with her awful childhood she should it would be nice to see her stand up to Angela like she did in the earlier books.

The mystery itself was mostly red herrings and one blatant but mostly overlooked suspect. Maybe it's my current career path that made the solution to obvious to me.

Four stars

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