Death Overdue: A Haunted Library Mystery by Allison Brook

              I’ve probably said this before, but I really am starting to wonder about small fictional towns.  So many murders happen in them!  In Death Overdue, the first book in the Haunted Library mystery series, a murder has occurred before the book even starts, a long time before the main character ever moves to town.  Then another one happens not long after she arrives.  For a small town, I would think that would be a lot of murder.

                Carrie Singleton is not sure about staying and living in the town of Clover Ridge.  She’s spent her adult life moving from town to town, and now that she has been in Clover Ridge for a little while, she feels it is time to move on again.  The problem is, she has just been offered the job of Head of Programs and Events at the library.  It is a good job that her aunt and uncle convince Carrie to at least give a try before moving on.  They advise Carrie that if it turns out she doesn’t like the job, she can always leave as planned.  Not that that is what they want.  Loving their niece very much, her aunt and uncle would much rather have Carrie stay in town.

                Fortunately for them, Carrie finds she really enjoys being the Head of Programs and Events.  She enjoys it even though it means putting up with Dorothy, the reference librarian who is out to sabotage her.  Other than that, things are going pretty well for Carrie.  At least they are until a presenter is killed at a library event.

                Al Buckley wanted to let the world know he knew the culprit in the murder of Laura Foster fifteen years earlier.  At least that is what he was claiming and why he was holding a presentation at the library.  This claim did not go over well with everyone.  Some people, including Laura’s son Ryan, did not want the presentation to go on.  Someone did not want the presentation to happen so badly that they killed Al before he could say all that he planned to say.  The question is, who was that person?

                Feeling guilty about Al’s death, Carrie will do whatever she can to figure out who the killer is.  With the help of Laura’s other son, Jared, Carrie looks into Al’s death, resulting in some dire consequences.

                Jared isn’t the only one helping Carrie, investigate, though.  The library ghost, Evelyn, does as well.  She drops Carrie hints here and there, and leads her on trails of clues.  She also helps Carrie with her job when Dorothy gets up to her antics and when Carrie’s boss, Sally, throws something unexpected at her.  Evelyn isn’t around all the time, but when she is, Carrie is always appreciative.

                While dealing with finding a killer and a ghost at her job, Carrie must also figure out her feelings for her mysterious landlord, Dylan.  He’s an old friend of her brother, so they knew each other briefly when they were young.  Now Dylan is her landlord and frequently away doing work for a mysterious job.  I wonder if the mystery surrounding Dylan and what he does for a living makes him even more intriguing to Carrie than he already is.

                In some ways the murder mystery was secondary to the personal things going on in Carrie’s life.  She’s dealing with the circumstances of her past while trying to build a new life.  At times I wasn’t so sure about this character.  Her attitude could often be abrasive.  In the end, especially as Carrie got more settled, she ended up being not too bad.  It helped that some of the other characters were really great to balance things out.  With the good other characters, and Carrie improving, I’m interested to see where else this series is going to go.