A BOOK CLUB TO DIE FOR. By Dorothy St. James. Berkley. 304 pages. $27.
Mount Pleasant-based mystery writer Dorothy St. James has been recognized with a multitude of honors, including nominations for the Southern Book Prize, the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award, the National Readers Choice Award, and the Romance Reviews Today Perfect 10 Award. Her new novel, “A Book Club to Die For,” is the third installment in her Beloved Bookroom Mysteries.
A riveting mystery for new and returning readers alike, "A Book Club to Die For” captures the hierarchical complexities of small-town society, the power of literature to connect and empower readers, and the dangers of extreme modernization.
Trudell “Tru” Beckett, librarian of Cypress, S.C., and amateur sleuth, confronts another murder surrounded by unnerving circumstances as ill-tempered former soap-opera star Rebecca White is found dead minutes before her famed book club, the Arete Society, was set to meet. The Arete Society has a century-long legacy as South Carolina’s most elite book club, with its members and book selections being notoriously stifling and exclusive.
White’s tenacity for deciding what constitutes appropriate reading for book club members parallels, in its way, ongoing debates about book challenges and bans.
The charming and powerful women of the club’s ranks are all suspects in Tru’s eyes. She must discover the murderer, while also navigating new uncertainties in her romance with police detective Jace Bailey and her job as a confounding experimental robot librarian invades her workspace, putting at risk the secret bookroom Tru previously established in the library’s basement.
When the police focus on Jace’s mother Hazel as their chief suspect, Tru must piece together a seemingly impossible case aided only by her bookish intuitions, her love for her community, and her wits. But hurdles abound. Tru’s mother deems her actions unbecoming of a proper southern lady. The police label her a know-it-all nuisance. To the powerful members of the Arete Society, she is a danger to their status.
Yet Tru finds support in friends who encourage her sharp mind and commitment to uncovering the truth. Empowered and emboldened by her allies, Tru embraces her crime-solving intuitions and solidifies her calling as a hometown hero.
Equal parts charming and intriguing, “A Book Club to Die For” is a deeply satisfying page-turner. Moreover, in our current era of book challenges, St. James has crafted a welcome reminder of the inspiring heroism and essential role of librarians as caretakers of intellectual freedom who actively confront conflicts in their communities with curated collections of freely available resources and a knack for creative problem-solving.
Tru Beckett is the unexpected hero we didn’t know we needed.
