Genre: Mystery
Hardcover; Digital Book
ISBN #: 9781683318743
Crooked Lane Books
304 Pages
$26.99; $12.99 Amazon
February 12, 2019
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Spring has sprung in quaint Taylorsford, Virginia, and the mayor has revived the town's long-defunct May Day celebration to boost tourism. As part of the festivities, library director Amy Webber is helping to organize a research project and presentation by a local folklore expert. All seems well at first - but spring takes on a sudden chill when a university student inexplicably vanishes during a bonfire.
The local police cast a wide net to find the missing woman, but in a shocking turn of events, Amy's swoon-worthy neighbor Richard Muir becomes a person of interest in the case. Not only is Richard the woman's dance instructor, he also doesn't have an alibi for the night the student vanished - or at least not one he'll divulge, even to Amy.
When the missing student is finally discovered lost in the mountains, with no memory of recent events - and a dead body lying nearby - an already disturbing mystery takes on a sinister new hue. Blessed with her innate curiosity and a librarian's gift for research, Amy may be the only one who can learn the truth.
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Amy Webber lives in a small town in Virginia with her Aunt Lydia and works as director for their library. She's got a romance going with her next-door neighbor Richard Muir who teaches dance at a nearby university. But there's a problem - both her parents and Richard's are coming to visit the same weekend and now it seems the 'twain shall meet' and neither Amy nor Richard is looking to make it happen for their own various reasons. There is also the fact that after a visit back home to his family not long ago, he's keeping secrets, and Amy wants to know why.
One night Amy is out with a group of people and sees a shadow in the nearby woods that looks a lot like her ex-boyfriend Charles, with whom she had a massive blowup that caused her to leave her previous job at the university. When she gets closer she realizes it certainly is him, and asks him why he's there. It turns out that he'd recently moved to the area to live with his girlfriend Marlis, who was killed not too long ago by a hit-and-run driver, and while Amy feels sorrow for his loss, she feels nothing else for him.
When asked her feelings regarding Charles by Professor Mona Raymond, she lets her know that all between her and Charles is in the past. But later Mona confronts her about something she believes Charles may have stolen, and Amy has no idea what she's talking about and hopes to stay out of it. At the same time, a student goes missing and it seems that Richard may have been one of the last people to see her; he naturally becomes a suspect in the disappearance.
There is also the fact that the elusive Kurt, one-time resident of Taylorsford who has now returned quite wealthy though perhaps achieving that wealth through not always proper means, has invited Amy to visit an elderly resident of the mountains who has tales of long ago along with a legend of the mountain fairies. Jumping at the chance Amy goes along, but even this visit leads to more questions about the history of the area, including the disappearance of two young women in 1879.
Then the missing student appears along with Mona's body, but who committed the murder? Fearing Richard might be poised to take the fall for the murder Amy decides to find out the identity of the real killer, not realizing that in doing so she could inadvertently lose her own life in the process...
While this book can be read as a stand alone, there are many references to the last book (which I have not read) and are not really explained. I do think that if you're going to reference things from previous books that you should at least make a full explanation of why someone said or thought that. It's like walking in on people in the middle of a conversation and then having them expect you to know what they're talking about. This is not the way to get new readers, unless the author believes she's fine with the ones she already has. However, it appears to all extents that one would be better served were one to read all three books in order to understand what is going on.
I liked the fact that once again as in the first book, there was a mystery-within-a-mystery, which is always fun to decipher, and I think Loie the kitten is adorable. I enjoyed reading about the mountain fairies, and whether they'll real or not I think depends on whether people believe in magic within themselves; but that again is an individual thing.
However, as nuanced as it might have been, I did feel that the author was adding bits of her own personal opinions on how things should be in certain areas, and I don't think that this is the business of an author unless you're reading non-fiction. I won't go into this as it wasn't directly thrown at the reader, but the clues are there for anyone who reads the book.
There was a nice suspenseful couple of chapters toward the end when Amy was getting closer to finding out the truth, and that was definitely worth reading; although I felt the book was slow in the beginning for various reasons and didn't pick up until over half the book was done. At that point we finally get to the gist of the matter and everything started to come together nicely. All in all, not a bad book and one that would be nice to read on a quiet evening.
https://smile.amazon.com/Past-Due-Murder-Library-Mystery/dp/1683318749/ref
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2548482305
More on Victoria Gilbert's Books: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/g/victoria-gilbert/
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