Book For Review Courtesy of NetGalley / POISONED PEN PRESS
RELEASE DATE : June 24
Mary Anna Evans' novel The Dark Library reads like a mature Nancy Drew adaptation (Nancy Drew herself his name checked.) Estella Ecker (named by her Dickens scholar father) is called home after many years away when her father has a stroke. Her mother seemingly disappeared without a trace. E's father leaves an impressive array of antique books, a collection of artworks not worth the canvas they're painted on, a crumbling down Victorian house, and severe debt. E takes a position in the college English department her father ran for several years and lives a meager paycheck to paycheck existence. She refuses to leave until she finds her mother.
E relies on her two best friends, Leontine and Marjorie, and her faithful housekeeper Annie, (subbing for George Bess, and Hannah.) E has a Ned Nickerson in the form of a fellow professor. The stakes, however, are much higher than your average Nancy Drew story ; just as Nancy was sans a mother, so is E, but her mother may have met a fatal end at the hands of E's father. When E finds $500 behind a secret panel in her father's library she begins to wonder what else her father kept hidden - Carson Drew he ain't. E's boss at the university plummets to his death, and the body of a missing a woman is recovered while police are searching for E's mother. With two dead bodies and her father's secrets, E and her clue crew have mysteries to solve. The novel shines a (flash) light into some very dark corners of humanity, and like a Nancy Drew novel there are twists and turns, hidden rooms, and masked identities. With higher and darker stakes E's sleuthing turns up sorrow and cruelty, but all is well for the sleuth and her crew at the end of the story.
