A PERFECT BIND

A librarian’s guilty secret is imperiled when murder stalks the library.

Upon learning that the town library in Cypress, South Carolina, will be turned into a high-tech center with no physical books, Trudell Becket and a band of like-minded friends manage to save many of the discarded books from the dump and open a library in the basement that they keep hidden from stern library director Lida Farnsworth. When heavy drinker Owen Maynard is found murdered in his truck behind the library, Tru, who’s already solved one murder, and her besties, Tori and Flossie, decide to use the knowledge they gained from all those years of reading mysteries to solve the case before the authorities stumble on the secret library. Tru also has another, perhaps unrelated, problem with someone getting into the room at night and tossing books around. Meanwhile, police detective Jace Bailey, who broke Tru’s heart in high school, keeps asking her out. Unable to believe that he’s really attracted to her, she puts him off despite the gossip that has them practically engaged and Tru pregnant. Delving into gossip and town history reveals that there used to be a speak-easy in the library, and Tru wonders if that’s what the intruder is searching for. But there are plenty of suspects who might have killed Maynard, who’s rumored to have stolen money from a local church and cheated his garage clients by overcharging.

It’s not easy to guess the killer in this amusing cozy filled with romantic angst and peculiar characters.