April 5, 2021
Gates’s heartwarming eighth Lighthouse Library mystery (after 2020’s A Death Long Overdue) finds the friends and family of librarian Lucy Richardson celebrating her long-awaited engagement to Connor McNeil, the mayor of their small town on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, at a local restaurant. The situation becomes awkward when Lucy’s former boyfriend, Ricky Lewiston, and his formidable mother crash the party—ostensibly to congratulate the happy couple, but actually to persuade Lucy to dump Connor and marry Ricky. The discovery of the body of Ricky’s father, Rich, behind the restaurant really puts the kibosh on the festivities. The police can’t figure out who killed Rich, or even why he’d come to town from Boston in the first place. Getting involved in a murder investigation is the last thing on Lucy’s to-do list, but she soon realizes that in order to move forward, one sometimes has to take care of a few loose ends from the past. Plenty of unexpected plot twists and characters the reader can really care about help make this cozy a winner. Gates (a pen name of Vicki Delany) consistently entertains. Agent: Kimberly Lionetti, BookEnds Literary.