Death Checked Out by Leah Dobrinska

Series Name: Larkspur Library Mystery #1
Genre: Cozy
Release: December 6, 2022

She’s used to checking out books. A death? Not so much.

Greta Plank, resident librarian in the small, lakeside town of Larkspur, Wisconsin, prefers her rose-tinted glasses extra rosy, thank you very much. Ever since a family tragedy landed her in Larkspur, she’s kept a happy-or-bust outlook. But Greta’s cheery resolve takes a hit when she finds the town recluse dead at the base of the stairs leading from his deck to the lake. What she assumes is a terrible accident Greta soon learns is something more sinister, and to make matters worse, new-to-town Detective Mark McHenry cites her as not only his primary source for the case, but his top suspect.

To clear her name and return to life as she knew it before the murder, Greta decides to do some clue cataloging of her own. After all, she’s got her master’s degree in library science with an emphasis in research methodology…how hard could a criminal investigation be? With the help of her fellow librarians and her lawyer mom, Greta begins checking out the pages of the murder, uncovering details about the recluse’s rare book collection and Larkspur’s real estate market as she tries to understand why anyone would have authored his death.

But with friends and neighbors stacking up as both victims and suspects, Greta must cross-reference the facts and put a hold on her idyllic worldview if she wants to get the full story without paying the fine of her life.

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Dru’s Short Musing:
Just because she found the body of the town’s recluse, she became the prime suspect and with no other course of action, decided to start an investigation to clear her name and reputation.

This was a well-written and fast-paced whodunit that became a page-turner as I had to know who was doing what to whom. The author did a great job in staging this wickedly solid mystery with a suspect pool where anyone could have been the perpetrator, but it was the slice and dice of clues that with each chapter read, took us closer to the true killer’s identity. There were a few red herrings that teased one way or another to a different person, but it was the visually descriptive narrative that kept me in the game. As the story moved to its conclusion, I had an inkling as to who was the killer and I enjoyed watching it all play out just as the author intended when their identity was revealed. Boasting a great cast of characters, engaging dialogue and a small-town atmosphere, this was a fun book to read, and I can’t wait to see where our heroine and her friends find themselves involved in the next book in this pleasantly appealing debut series.

FTC Full Disclosure – I received a digital ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.