Checking Out Crime

January 15, 2021
A crime-seeking Michigan bookmobile driver pairs with an equally curious friend to find a killer in an attempt to distract herself from her fiance's jewelry shortfall. While trying to recruit her fellow library employees to share in the work and love of her bookmobile project, Minnie Hamilton sees a speeding car driving erratically and knows there must be trouble since little Chilson isn't known for daredevil drivers. Things go from suspicious to terrible when the driver apparently hits a cyclist in the path. The poor man dies in spite of Minnie's best efforts at CPR, and Minnie feels a responsibility to figure out what happened, especially when she learns that the dead man, Brown Bernier, was a friend of her fiance, Rafe Niswander. Anyone who's a friend of Rafe's at least deserves a solid murder investigation. The detectives on the case feel confident they'll find the killer, but a chance meeting between Minnie and Detective Hal Inwood's wife, Tabitha, leads the two women to form a dream team to solve Brown's murder themselves, ably assisted by Eddie, Minnie's rescue cat. Meanwhile, Minnie has another mystery to solve: Why hasn't Rafe given her a ring? Minnie, not usually the type to go gaga over jewelry, can only hope the lack of bling isn't indicative of some greater lack. Digging into Brown's murder with Tabitha is the perfect excuse to keep her from obsessing over whether something more is wrong between her and Rafe. A cozy whose main distinction is that the dead guy's a sweetie, not a baddie.

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March 15, 2021
As bookmobile librarian Minnie Hamilton and her assistant, Julia, are returning from a board meeting in the late September dusk on a two-lane road in northwest Michigan, they are nearly sideswiped by a speeding car. Moments later, they screech to a stop, barely avoiding a dead body on the road. While the women answer questions for the police, Eddie, Minnie's adopted tabby cat, who rides along in the bookmobile, escapes. With his signature "mrr," he calls everyone to an abandoned bicycle in the woods. Initially, Minnie leaves the investigation to the authorities, but it's a small town where people talk, and, intrigued, she soon joins forces with Tabitha, the lead detective's wife, to make inquiries of their own. When a second cyclist is found dead, their sleuthing becomes more urgent, and more deadly. Ninth in the series, this will appeal to fans of Lilian Jackson Braun, both for the rural Michigan setting and for Eddie, who, like Braun's Koko and Yum Yum, observes and points but does not talk.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.