Review by Booklist Review
Liesl Weiss is acting as head of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections while her boss, Christopher, lies in a coma. She'd much rather be behind the scenes, but the university president, Lawrence Gerber, wants her schmoozing with donors. She sets up a private showing of the Plantin Polyglot Bible, Christopher's prize acquisition, but when she opens the safe where it was stored, it's not there. Has it been misplaced among thousands of rare books, or was it stolen? When an employee goes missing, signs point to theft, and still Lawrence is reluctant to get the police involved. Liesl is left to solve the mystery on her own, unsure of whom to trust among her staff, all while keeping donors happy and running the library. Jurczyk's unique debut has plenty for bibliophiles to relish, from dark stacks to precious manuscripts. Readers will sympathize with Liesl and her desperation to keep her head above the demands of a position she didn't ask for while untangling the intricate threads of the mystery of the missing book.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Librarian Liesl Weiss, the protagonist of Jurczyk's underwhelming debut, is asked to return to Toronto from her sabbatical after the library director of the unnamed university where she works suffers a stroke. When a newly purchased manuscript vanishes from a locked vault and a missing female colleague is suspected of the theft, Liesl must dig deep into the university's ugly underbelly to find the truth, despite her male colleagues' attempts to bully her into silence. Jurczyk paints Liesl's oppressors with a heavy hand, from Lawrence Garber, the triathlon-obsessed college president, to Percy T. Pickens III, the vulgar, glad-handing donor. Mystery readers are likely to be disappointed by the crimes and their solutions, and bibliophiles may feel that the rare books themselves are given short shrift, despite the author's obvious research. This works best as an unflinching appraisal of the personal and professional effects of a woman's aging into invisibility. Fans of women's fiction may want to check it out. Agent: Erin Clyburn, Jennifer De Chiara Literary. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT When a rare book goes missing at a Toronto university library, Liesl Weiss is in the midst of a mystery that no one wants to solve. The director of the library is unconscious at the hospital after a stroke, and Liesl, now interim director, has been called in from her sabbatical to open the safe that should contain the book, a Plantin Polyglot Bible. But the safe is empty. Ordered to keep this information from the donors, the public, and the police, Liesl starts searching the stacks, pondering how to manage the scandal when she'd rather be writing her book and planning her retirement. Then another book disappears, carbon dating reveals a book to be a facsimile, and a library staffer goes missing. Suspecting that the culprit is a staff member, Liesl knows it's up to her to find the truth. VERDICT Filled with characters that resonate, glimpses into the reality of libraries and academia, and enchanting descriptions of rare books, this debut from a librarian will captivate bibliophiles.--Melissa DeWild, Comstock Park, MI
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Toronto librarian Jurczyk's first novel is a valentine to librarians that doesn't shy away from their dark sides. The ceremonial display of a university library's latest headline acquisition, a Plantin Polyglot Bible, to a select group of influential donors comes a cropper over two misfortunes. First, Christopher Wolfe, the director of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections for the 40 years since 1969, suffers an incapacitating stroke before he can retrieve the Bible from the safe in which he stored it while awaiting an insurance evaluation (best guess: $500,000). Then, when Liesl Weiss, the longtime assistant who's suddenly catapulted into Wolfe's job, finally gets the combination from his distraught wife, she finds the safe empty. The donors are fobbed off with a Peshawar manuscript that may include the very first use of a zero, but the library is still in crisis. Was the Plantin simply misplaced or (gasp) stolen? How long can university president Lawrence Garber keep its disappearance secret? And how will the library ever recover the trust of major donors if the staff can't keep track of the materials it purchases with their big-ticket donations? Liesl is especially distressed because her protégé, Miriam Peters, goes missing very shortly after the Platin, and the discovery of her corpse, an apparent suicide, weeks later in a nearby wood does nothing to derail the assumption that she was the thief. Even though, as Liesl's colleague Francis Churchill points out, "Our entire job is finding information," Jurczyk consistently subordinates the question of whodunit to the question of how to handle the case. The perfect gift for librarians and those who love them--and doesn't that include just about every reader? Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
