VALENTINE MURDER

Who had the supreme ill grace to execute disorganized librarian Bitsy Howell, in the brand-new workroom of the Broadbrooks Free Library, just in time for Lucy Stone to discover as she arrived for her first meeting as the newest member of the board of directors? Whoever it was, the locked door between Bitsy’s corpse and the cozy world of Tinkers Cove, Maine, outside, points to somebody who either entered through the conference room or used a key to the outside door—in other words, one of the seven library directors. Was it board president Gerald Asquith, a closet gambler who may have financed his insatiable appetite for lottery tickets with a cunning theft? Julia Tilley, the bossy former librarian who never seemed able to give up the reins to her successor? Corney Clarke, the caterer and “lifestyle consultant” whose secret recipes have been filched from the backs of ingredient boxes? Hayden Northcross, the gay antiques dealer who gives Lucy some puzzling information about the library’s prize antique? Or perhaps Lucy herself, who ought to be getting a free pass on the basis of her four previous cases (Back to School Murder, 1997, etc.), but who’s informed by the state police that the prime suspect is the person who first reported finding the body? Everybody’s hiding some secret both decorous and potentially fatal, but only readers who survive 15 rounds of innocuous conversations and domestic details will find out which secret was worth killing for. (Author tour)