Past Due for Murder

Preorder purchase link

In Past Due for Murder by Victoria Gilbert, life as a library director in Taylorsford, Virginia, has suited Amy Webber well. Her new boyfriend, the gorgeous Richard Muir, is attentive until suddenly he is not. (Past Due for Murder will be released on February 12 by Crooked Lane Books.)

Amy has organized a storytelling session around a campfire in the woods with folklore expert and lecturer at Clarion University Mona Raymond. When one of the college students working with Mona goes missing from a library function, Amy sets out to find out what happened to her. Lacey's friends mention she has hinted at a relationship with an older man and that worries Amy. 

When Amy's former boyfriend arrives on the scene newly grieving the death of his girlfriend who was killed by a hit and run driver, Amy tries to be sympathetic, but she recalls his manipulative ways. Richard, Amy's current boyfriend, is acting very distance and she is puzzled by this

When a folklore expert is found dead with the missing teen

unconscious next to her, Amy tries to track down the killer. Signs seem to point to Richard as he is Lacey's dance instructor and cannot account for his whereabouts the night Mona was killed. 

With Lacey in an induced coma, she is not able to give any details of how she ended up near the body or what actually happened. The police do notice that Lacey, although she was supposedly missing for five days, she did not look like someone who had been in the woods that long. This leads them to think she was hiding in someone's house.

Using her research techniques as a librarian, Amy digs deeper into the stories of the people involved to get at the truth. I like the development of Amy as a character and I look forward to others in this series.