D.R. Meredith, Murder by the Book

Murder by the Book

D.R. Meredith

Berkley, June 2006, $6.99

ISBN: 0425209253

Texas suffers from a terrible drought that has dried up many of the lakes in the Amarillo area. The Wild Horse Lake is at the lowest ebb it has been in decades; so low that an abandoned Depression Era car, up until recently buried under water, is now visible.

Like her peers at the Murder by the Yard Reading Circle that meets at the Time and Again Bookstore, reference librarian Megan Clark enjoys reading and discussing mystery novels. Unlike her friends, she finds the recently discovered vehicle fascinating as she wants to know why it was dumped into the lake. However, as she tries to learn more about the Depression Era car, Megan begins to find corpses; the police consider the librarian as the prime suspect as they have no one else. However, Megan believes the real culprit knows Agatha Christie intimately, as the killer seems to follow the means of many of the late author's novels.

MURDER BY THE BOOK, the fifth Murder by the Yard tale, is a fun cozy that fans of the series will appreciate, as Megan urges her reluctant armchair book club detectives to help her solve the Depression Era mystery and the present day whodunit. At the same time she wants their help, Megan knows she is a person of interest to the cops, and that probably one of her bookworm colleagues is most likely the killer, as Christie is the focus. D.R. Meredith provides a delightful amateur sleuth tale with some police procedural elements that contrast to Megan's sleuthing skills.