KILLER RESEARCH

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.