WHOSE BODY IN THE LIBRARY

A librarian’s exciting new job turns deadly.

Nichelle Gilcrest is exchanging her life in Rochester, New York, for a new job as assistant director of the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. In her 50s, Nichelle is divorced, her twin girls are out on their own, and she quit a job she dislikes to earn a master’s degree in Library and Information Science. Veteran librarian Lucy McNeil, now the library director, welcomes Nichelle, whose perks include an apartment in the lighthouse. As far as Lucy knows, Nichelle has no connection to the Outer Banks—until Nichelle opens her front door and discovers a dead man on the steps. Lucy has had enough experience with murders to know what to do, although Det. Sam Watson, her longtime friend on the police force, has retired, and new detective Rhonda Thomas is a lot less eager to work with amateur sleuths. Nichelle suspects that the dead man might be her father, who never returned from a fishing trip to the Outer Banks when she was 16 and her brother, Brad, was a year older. The library staff and patrons welcome Nichelle, but she can’t help thinking about her father’s disappearance and the mystery of his life over the last 38 years. With help from her new friends and her brother, who secretly visited the Outer Banks over many years, she starts digging into that life. Aside from a part-time job, Gilcrest seemed to have kept himself afloat by conning older women out of money with help from someone posing as his daughter, giving quite a few disgruntled people a motive for murder.

The appealing new sleuth added to this long-running series opens up many possibilities for future investigations.