Murder at the 42nd Street Library by Con Lehane is the first book in the NEW Ray Ambler mystery series. Publisher: Minotaur Books, April 2016

Murder at the 42nd Street Library opens with a murder in a second floor office of the iconic, beaux-arts flagship of the New York Public Library. Ray Ambler, the curator of the library’s crime fiction collection, joins forces with NYPD homicide detective Mike Cosgrove in hopes of bringing a murderer to justice.

In his search for the reasons behind the murder, Ambler uncovers hidden–and profoundly disturbing–relationships between visitors to the library. These include a celebrated mystery writer who has donated his papers to the library’s crime fiction collection, that writer’s missing daughter, a New York society woman with a hidden past, and one of Ambler’s colleagues at the world-famous library. Those shocking revelations lead inexorably to the tragic and violent events that follow.

This was a good read with the iconic and famed New York Public Library serving as the backdrop in this intriguing drama. When a man is murder inside the library, librarian curator protagonist puts on his sleuthing cap and along with the local homicide detective search for clues in this compelling tale of misdirection. I like the pacing the author took to bring this story to life with its varied list of characters, most of whom are suspects. The mystery was well-presented in a way that peeked at secrets destined to be exposed and with entanglements that had me diving into the book to see what happened next. The author’s use of the library and New York City augments the scenes and pit itself against a killer.