While Lucy McNeil is enjoying her new job as the mother of twin boys and library director, new librarian Nichelle Gilchrest has just arrived at the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library, reporting for duty. But life throws a wrench on Nichelle’s first day when she finds a body on the steps–a body that bears a startling resemblance to her father who disappeared on a fishing trip to the Outer Banks thirty-eight years ago.
Fingerprints confirm the dead body is indeed Nichelle’s father, now living in Nags Head under the name Brian Saunders. Brian had been befriending older lonely women in exchange for money, but was he working alone?
Detective Rhonda Thomas is on the case and the suspect list is only getting longer. Sorting through the wronged women and their relatives, Detective Thomas discovers Nichelle’s own brother Brad had been in Nags Head a few days before the murder happened and has been lying about his whereabouts.
Hoping to clear her brother’s name, Nichelle decides to investigate what happened. With seasoned sleuth Lucy’s gentle encouragement for the amateur, Nichelle is in for an exciting and dangerous first week at the library.
A long time reader of this series and I can safely say that this novel was not what I expected. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. The biggest issue I had with the novel was the point of view. Normally a first person style from Lucy, Eva Gates decided to switch it up with a two people point of view. The first person perspective was told by the new librarian Nichelle, whereas Lucy has become the third person perspective. This unbalances the reader because first person Lucy is what is expected, and when not obvious, can seriously confuse the reader. For example, the beginning of the novel is first person Nichelle, but it is not immediately evident that this is a different person. In fact, this reader actually stopped to check that it was a new book and not an accidental resubmission of the first book in the series. Then add in that there are the inserted chapters from third person Lucy that don’t really seem to add much to the mystery and aren’t labeled, that it feels like the author kept her in as a “look, Lucy’s still here.” This abrupt change of character felt like the reader was forced to sit outside and watch their family through the kitchen window.
Normally I would say that having a new narrator could be good for a series. It can be refreshing, especially with mysteries. But Nichelle’s personal reasons combined with her lack of knowledge of the area, people, and sleuthing made it difficult to value her as a reliable detective. There is also the new detective who, at the end of the previous book, already had my hackles raised. I did not like police detectives who treat “amateur detectives” like they are problems instead of resources. I especially don’t like new detectives who treat long standing and established characters this way. Potentially having a new first person amateur detective (Nichelle) as well as a brand new police detective (Rhonda Thomas) feel like the series needs to be made into a different series. One completely separate from Lucy and the Lighthouse Bodie Library.
Overall, I rate this novel 3 out of 5 stars.
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