From Publishers Weekly
The death of a decidedly unpleasant librarian in Oxford's New Bodleian stirs Sheila Malory, first met in Mrs. Malory Investigates , to probe the present and her personal past. Sheila's godson Tony, who works at the library, finds Gwen Richmond crushed under some collapsed bookshelves. There are indications that Gwen may have been a blackmailer and murder is a distinct possibility. Among the suspects--all once threatened by Gwen--are the girl Tony is in love with, who stole, then returned a valuable book; and a woman don who took an important artifact from an archeological dig. Sheila reencounters Trinity don Rupert Drummond, who had significantly influenced her life when she was an Oxford student; he also had unhappy ties to the dead woman. But it is the past as recounted in Gwen's diary about her farm work as a Land Army girl during WW II that provides the key to the murder and forces Sheila to reexamine what she had considered a happy time in her life. Holt's civilized and tantalizing mystery evokes both modern Oxford and rural wartime England.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Bland Sheila Malory (the widow heroine of Mrs. Malory Investigates) settles her son in at Oxford, then retires to the Bodleian Library, arguably the nicest setting a mystery could have, to research an article on little-known Victorian authors. Her godson Tony, a shy Bodleian staffer, is helpful but fretful: it was he who, a short while back, discovered irascible Gwen Richmond dead in the stacks. The police deemed it an accident, but Tony has found two clues--and with them the dull, naive Mrs. Malory begins delving. She learns that Gwen was hated by many and may have been blackmailing some, including Tony's financially overwhelmed sweetheart; an elderly scholar from Harvard; and the inimitable Fitz, a don under whose spell Sheila and her youthful love Rupert fell years ago as undergraduates. Whodunit? Certainly not the author, who is, correctly, more interested in Bodleian accoutrements, Oxford byways, and bittersweet remembrances of romance. Not as complicated as the author may have intended, but one of the world's great libraries is always worth a visit. --
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
