Like Jenn McKinlay’s latest Library Lover’s Mystery, Word to the Wise, Victoria Gilbert’s Bound for Murder features a small-town library director in a darker situation than usually expected in a cozy mystery series. Illicit drugs, and a commune aren’t usually typical in a cozy.

Amy Webber is the Library Director of Taylorsford Public Library in Virginia. The only other full-time employee is her best friend, Sunny Fields. But, Sunny is running for mayor, and there are sometimes a few political distractions. The current issue is more than a distraction. A body is found on the organic farm belonging to Sunny’s grandparents, and the age of the remains indicates it might go back to the 1960s when the Fields had a commune on the property. Several people went missing, including an African-American musician. While people claimed they heard from him in L.A., when the body is identified, it stirs up the past. And, Sunny’s campaign is naturally in jeopardy.

By now, it’s known that Amy uses her research skills while searching for clues to town mysteries. The Fields ask her to look for the people who once lived in the commune. Although it’s about fifty years later, they’re worried about the connections to the past. And, the murder of another member of that small group causes rumors to fly in town.

While Amy noses around, researches and talks to people, she stirs up trouble. There’s graffiti, an attack at the library, and she’s shot at. She takes it as a warning, but a former drug dealer turned art collector warns her that there are powerful people with connections to drug sales in the 60s who might not take kindly to her investigations. She swears she’s turning over all her information to the police, but someone thinks she knows too much. This case from the past may endanger not just a mayoral campaign, but also people’s lives.

Bound for Murder is an intriguing mystery, but I have a personal problem with a couple scenes in the book. Either Amy has a nervous tic, or the author has one with her writing. In that case, an editor needs to notice. In every scene when Amy drinks wine, she messes with the wine glass. In every other sentence of that scene, she puts down the wine glass. She picks up the wine glass. She chugs the wine. Her fiance “paused with his glass at his lips…He took a drink before setting down his glass.” Enough with the wine glasses! That’s just my own complaint because I went back and counted twelve comments about the glasses in two pages of text.

I like cold cases, and, of course, I like mysteries involving librarians. But, I tire of drawn-out storylines. Gilbert needs to settle the story of the mysterious art collector that’s been going on for four books. I don’t know about other readers, but I finally give up when authors spend too much time focusing on one issue.

I’m not quite there with the Blue Ridge Library mysteries. Bound for Murder has well-developed characters, and an interesting backstory. But, Gilbert needs to deal with some of the issues, and move on.

Victoria Gilbert’s website is http://victoriagilbertmysteries.com/

Bound for Murder by Victoria Gilbert. Crooked Lane Books, 2020. ISBN 9781643852430 (hardcover), 320p.

*****
FTC Full Disclosure – I received the book to review for a journal.