Amy Webber and Richard Muir find themselves involved in another murder in Shelved under Murder by Victoria Gilbert. With the Heritage Festival coming up in Taylorsford, Virginia, Sunny Field, the assistant librarian, gets her local artist friend, Rachel LaBlanc, to donate three of her expensive paintings to the library fundraiser booth at the festival. Amy and Richard join Sunny in going to Rachel’s farm to pick up the paintings, and the pair go to the barn gallery to look for Rachel while Sunny goes to the house. In the barn, the couple notices the distinct odor of linseed oil. As they explore further, Richard suddenly lets out a bunch of expletives as he has found the murdered body of the famous artist.
As the police examine the barn, they find a secret room in which are stored numerous pieces of forged artworks. This brings the FBI to the town as well as a forensic art expert, whom Amy’s Aunt Lydia eagerly welcomes into her home in the hopes that he will help to draw attention to the art of her late husband. However, Lydia doesn’t count on finding a new admirer in Hui “Hugh” Chen.
I enjoyed Murder for the Books a lot, so I had high expectations for Shelved under Murder and was happily not disappointed. The book had an interesting angle of art forgery and resources used to create forgeries and detect them. I did guess the murderer fairly early in the book, but that did little to diminish my enjoyment of the book. The path of locating the murderer kept me fascinated and listening raptly.
The characters in this book were very realistic people, with many turning out to be not quite the all good or all bad people we expect initially. I appreciated the way that Amy feels some insecurities about her relationship with Richard as he has to dance with his ex-fiancee, a perfectly natural reaction. But he shows his dedication to Amy despite having been with his ex, showing Amy not only his love for her but just how much she can trust and truly love him. I also appreciated the illustration of the power of forgiveness and subsequent healing that we see in other characters.
Colleen Marlo performs the audio edition of this book, and she does an effective job at keeping the book moving quickly. She plays the characters well, especially the usually stoic Aunt Lydia who gets hysterical over issues related to her husband and the gruff Kurt Kendrick, a local art dealer with dubious connections.
I appreciated listening to Shelved under Murder. The whole book kept me eagerly listening and enjoying every detail. Even though I guessed the solution early in the book I found the conclusion to be exciting and dramatic. This book is well worth listening to, though I recommend listening to the previous book first, as you will get some spoilers if you go back and listen or read the previous book later. I give this book five stars!
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