"An exhilarating, entertaining literary thriller with satisfying twists in each of its tales-within-tales-within-tales."
Clever, compelling, and laced with juicy clues, Sulari Gentill’s Woman in the Library is an elegantly written work of murder mystery magnificence - an addictive game of Cluedo that pivots from death in a library, to dark secrets from the past.
A scream interrupts the peace of the grand reading room in Boston Public Library where four people are working. A woman has been murdered, and a writer - the narrator - who heard the scream uses the incident and her reading room companions as source material. It’s “the story of strangers bonded by a scream”, strangers the writer names Handsome Man, Heroic Chin, and Freud Girl. In the narrator’s words, it’s “a bit like a locked room mystery in reverse… The mystery is about where her body was between the scream and when she was found."
As the four library-mates form close bonds, the body count rises, love blooms, and truth and trust are called into question. Courtesy of the sparky character dynamics, alongside being an un-put-down-able mystery, it’s also absolutely hilarious and thought-provoking as it explores the nature of truth, fiction, and the blurred lines between the two. All of which means Woman in the Library is an exhilarating reading experience that stimulates the brain, heart and funny bone in one thrilling fell swoop.
| Primary Genre | Crime and Mystery |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
