And the cover doesn’t match anything in the story.

82. Haunted Heirloom – Marjorie Eatock

This is a case of a good title on the wrong book. There’s nothing haunted about the heirloom, a letter only very shortly authenticated as being from Abraham Lincoln before the authenticator is murdered. I was intrigued because this involves an Iowan librarian and murder and had the potential for ghosts alongside library work and yet that was unfounded and a lot of it was convoluted and annoying and the love story was a bit of a blindside.

There are sisters who run the library and who employ Jenny, whose mother has passed but used to work there too and also worked for Ross Gilead, famously interesting man in town who has a serious collection and authentication powers. The sisters have been dating Ross, who was also married, and this guy named Bill Taylor, who seems to be trying to get himself into Jenny’s good graces rather creepily.

Jenny’s mom’s things, like her car and house, all seem to require some sort of smack or kick before they work, which was charming enough, but Jenny just does not seem like she’s going to get anywhere with selling her mom’s house, using her library degree to work with these weirdo sisters, or with the functional fiancée she has back in Coralville, who she needs to get a better library job. I’ve been to the public library in Coralville, it was nice but quite small and probably does not have a huge staff… Anyway, Jenny gets the job of cataloguing all of the dead Mr. Gilead’s library and this leads to the best part of the book when a family member of his asks if he can help her and she asks him if he knows library science. He does not. He will not really help.

Jenny finds out some secrets about her mom and a certain lack of integrity while also finding that the Gilead household is hiding a lot too and so are the sisters running the library and Bill too. The thing is they’re not very dynamically presented secrets. This is a Gothic, but it’s lacking some intrigue and suspense. Maybe the house is too close to town.

 

Pickles and Murderface are waiting for something suspenseful or ghosty to happen instead of just romantic intrigue without much interesting foundation. They will be waiting quite some time.