In Murder in the Locked Library by Ellery Adams, Jane Steward is finally getting her spa built at Storyton Hall, the resort she manages that is filled with books from floor to ceiling and has a full-time librarian. But as the contractors are digging the foundation, Jane’s 7-year-old twins, Fitzgerald (Fitz) and Hemingway (Hem), who are happily watching the moving of dirt, spot a bone, halting construction. The police come and find more of a skeleton, plus a locked box with it. At a local university in Virginia, where Storyton is located, the police chief locates a forensic anthropologist, who eagerly comes to Storyton to excavate the skeleton along with several graduate students. Celia deduces that the skeleton belongs to a mid-19th century man suffering from both rickets and tuberculosis. The box contains an old book that has deteriorated so badly that only three words can be found in it: “skin the tongue,” making them assume it is an old cookbook. But even more dramatic, the skeleton of the man shows signs of having been murdered. But Jane believes that instead of murder, the man was killed by a Fin, a much earlier generation of the skilled men who protect Jane, Guardian of Storyton Hall, and the treasures of secret and valuable books it contains.
Celia asks Jane and Sterling, the full-time librarian and a Fin, to research the book. As Storyton is hosting a conference of the Robert Harley Rare Book Society, it seems ideal to ask the assistance of the members of that society in identifying the book. Bart Baylor, president of the society and the “Book Doctor,” the best restorer of old books, comes to tell Jane and Sterling that he has found the solution to the book. The blank pages aren’t really blank but written with a form of hidden ink, and he has figured out the book’s identity, possibly the only copy of a previously destroyed book known as The Devil’s Recipes and which contains recipes that have poisonous foods in many recipes. Then, just before Bart gets to the conclusion, he has a seizure that they think has come from his allergy to latex, but the epi-pen doesn’t work, and he dies.
Murder in the Locked Library ties together a murder more than a hundred years old with a murder that takes place today. Some of the details related to the Rare Book Society has really interesting details, such as a workshop on printing with movable type, as in Gutenburg’s printing press. I also enjoyed a contest in which each members of the society wore a costume that created a pun, usually of the title of a book, but sometimes other topics. I had fun guessing the meaning of the costumes with Jane and her best friend, Eloise.
I really enjoyed the characters in this book as they returned with further development from the previous book, Murder in the Secret Garden. I enjoyed the details of the Fins and seeing their planning sessions, though I missed getting to see the Fins put Jane and her twins through physical training.
I also really appreciate the Cover Girls, Jane’s book club where they all support each other and fill in for Jane when she is occupied trying to save the world. It would have been fun to see a little more of these women. They prove to be excellent rolen models of strong women who can be feminine at the same time. I sometimes hear people argue that feminism does not go with femininity, but the Cover Girls, all of whom are professional women and most of whom own their own businesses in the town of Storyton demonstrate that a woman can be romantic and have a great relationship with a man, all the while dressing up glamorously for balls, without losing the inner strength that comprises her feminism. This amazing group of women show women and girls today that they don’t have to choose between their own personal identity with a career and having a feminine, romantic life as well.
There are a lot of great cozy mystery authors who create much more content than just an interesting plot, but Ellery Adams is by far and away the best at combining deeper lessons with great plots and interesting characters. In Murder in the Locked Library, we see a clear demonstration of how certain books can contain dangerous materials that could create havoc if made public. This book makes it clear that books themselves are not the danger; instead, it is the dangerous content created by dangerous people that makes a book risky for the public to access. For example, books from the early 20th century advocating eugenics have the potential to encourage some people to sterilize those with mental deficiencies in order to prevent them from passing on their mental problems. Or books arguing that black people are subhuman can encourage severe discrimination against thosev of this race. Thus, Jane and Storyton Hall preserve these books as secret, not to destroy them, but to hold onto them until they will no longer exert the same power to create the societal damage they would exert if made public today.
Another of Adams’s real gifts is mixing together genres to blend into one unique genre. While this book is primarily a cozy mystery, it also has elements of a standard family drama and fantasy features. In the first book, as Jane enters the social library, she compares her experience going into the library as going through the Wardrobe into the enchanted world of Narnia. This gives the books a sense of fantasy to it, as we enter a special world made just for books. But it’s only a touch of fantasy, as this is the extent of that genre.
Johanna Parker the audio edition of Murder in ther Locked Library. Parker has a voice that is appropriately suited to the sense of this book, and I felt delight in the voices she gives each character. She reads with such expression, especially the romantic passages, that I truly feel transported to Storyton myself.
The whole book riveted me, keeping me listening continuously and not even letting me go to sleep until I had completed this book because it was just too good to take a break from it. It has been nearly two years since the previous book in this series, Murder in the Secret Garden, was published. On the one hand, we had to wait too long to continue this excellent series, but on the other hand, it was worth the wait. I just hope that the next book in the series doesn’t take nearly as long for us to be able to enjoy them. I give this book an honorary seven stars out of five. After all, don’t we all like to get extra credit? And this book deserves it more than most.
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