When the library in North Harbor, Michigan is flooded, local bookstore owner Samantha Worthington offers her premises as a makeshift meeting place for the local Mystery Mavens Book Club. Club leader, Delia Marshall, is more than difficult. She’s also a book reviewer who isn’t shy to break a writer’s career, and Sam has a first novel soon to be released. Delia and Sam do clash over an interaction between Delia and Sam’s dogs, but Sam still does her best to accommodate Delia’s demands, including delivering a custom-ordered book, The Complete Works of Agatha Christie, in the middle of the night. Delia doesn’t answer when Sam arrives at her home with the massive book, so Sam returns to her apartment above the bookstore.
The next morning, Delia is found dead in the bookstore, struck and killed apparently by the book Sam had tried to deliver. A couple of local officers are quick to suspect Sam of committing murder and she has her hands full trying to find the real culprit.
While Sam is dealing with this in her real life, she’s also writing her next British historical mystery where the queen mother is alleged to have murdered a journalist, and the reader is treated to excerpts.
At first, dipping into Sam’s writing seemed a bit contrived, but I have to admit, I did like that story and found it quite interesting. In fact, returning to Sam’s story felt a bit jarring now and then!
In the end both mysteries are solved, of course, and our heroine in each piece is free to continue on to her next adventure.
3 stars
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