Title: Murder at the 42nd Street Library
Author: Con Lehane
Series: n/a
Format: Digital ARC, 320 pages
Publication Details: April 26th 2016 by Minotaur Books
Genre(s): Mystery
Disclosure? Yep! I received a free copy in exchange for an HONEST review.
Murder at the 42nd Street Library opens with a murder in a second floor office of the iconic, beaux-arts flagship of the New York Public Library. Ray Ambler, the curator of the library’s crime fiction collection, joins forces with NYPD homicide detective Mike Cosgrove in hopes of bringing a murderer to justice.
In his search for the reasons behind the murder, Ambler uncovers hidden–and profoundly disturbing–relationships between visitors to the library. These include a celebrated mystery writer who has donated his papers to the library’s crime fiction collection, that writer’s missing daughter, a New York society woman with a hidden past, and one of Ambler’s colleagues at the world-famous library. Those shocking revelations lead inexorably to the tragic and violent events that follow.
Review
A grand library. A mysterious murder. A librarian turned sleuth… in theory this booked ticked all the boxes for me and I was looking forward to it a lot.
Ray Ambler is the librarian in charge of the (fictitious) crime fiction collection at the world famous New York Public Library. When a Dr. James Donnelly is murdered in the library, Ambler takes it upon himself to investigate. His boss Harry witnessed the murder, yet fails to identify the culprit, and in time Ambler discovers that the murder is linked to recently acquired documents from renowned crime writer Nelson Yates.
With a large pool of suspects and a growing concern that the crime fiction collection is to be expunged, Ray Ambler has got his work cut out for him and his amateur detective skills.
I really wanted to love this book but I was left feeling pretty meh about it. At first I liked that it felt like an old fashioned mystery but in the end I just found it a bit dull. I never really got invested in the characters – or the murder – and so I didn’t feel compelled to turn the pages. I also thought there were too many characters and I was often confused about what was going on.
Still, I found it to be a relatively quick read and I loved the library setting. I’ve never been to the NYPL but I can certainly picture it after reading this book; the descriptions were lovely. I enjoyed it enough, but I guess I was hoping for more. Worth giving it a go though!
Murder at the 42nd Street Library is out now!
