THREE CAN KEEP A SECRET

A small-town librarian continues to demonstrate that the most dangerous homicide zones in America are public libraries.

From the moment her husband’s murder chased her from her big-deal job in the New York fashion industry to the upstate village of Raven Hill, Greer Hogan has never taken to energetic, insensitive Anita Hunzeker, who chairs the library’s board of trustees. But she’s far from rejoicing when Anita is found dead in her wrecked car, bashed to death with a flashlight. Nor do any of the other librarians or townsfolk united in their dislike of Anita celebrate her demise, though they don’t exactly mourn her either. A hush seems to fall over Raven Hill, as if the locals were waiting for something. And so they are: the fatal poisoning of historian James Walters, whose research seems to have taken him a little too close to the Ravenscroft Trust, the vehicle by which matriarch Harriet Ravenscroft funded the relatives who came after her. The discovery of Anita’s fingerprints on a bottle of wine in Walters’ house convinces Officer Jennie Webber, Greer’s workout buddy, that the two murders are connected, and she urges Greer to dive into the kind of research librarians do best. Greer unearths so many suspects, motives, and possible alibis, however, that the case becomes even murkier. The records she consults with the help of Raven Hill archivist Millicent Ames and everlasting temporary diocesan archivist Sister Mary Josephine carry hints of family quarrels, financial irregularities, and perhaps an illegitimate birth that would scuttle all the assumptions the locals make about the Ravenscroft Trust. But the details are so unremittingly dry that only a librarian convinced she was channeling Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers would find excitement here.

A well-meaning plod.