A retired librarian is murdered when her generous trust for local nonprofits is announced. Her frugal lifestyle allowed her to amass a fortune but someone didn’t agree with the disbursements. An aging detective, a washed-up reporter, a shrewd librarian and a busy body historian endeavor to
solve the mystery that the detectives seem to be bungling in this classic who-done-it.
Excerpt:
“I’m just gonna tell it like it was, or at least the way I remember it, that quiet day in early autumn of 2014 when all hell broke loose in our little village. No one expected it. A murder! This wasn’t the big city, it was South Windham for Pete’s sake. The biggest thing that has ever happened here was when the train hit the oil tanker and it all went up in flames. That was big, but this was different. This was murder. And this was not a question of murder, but the real thing, gruesome, bloody and awful.
Everyone knew her, the victim, Hilda Lyman. She was a mousy little thing, if mousy can describe a person. She spent most of her time at the library. She volunteered, but it was where she had worked until she retired. She lived around the corner, just a few doors past what used to be the old church. She usually walked the short distance to the library, waving at everyone, and sometimes brought her dog along with her.
The day it happened he was with her, a big golden retriever named Stoker after the red-headed author Bram Stoker. She
gave all of her animals authors’ names; her two black kittens were named Edgar and Allan after Poe. But only Stoker was
there that day.”