Murder at the college library

In the fifth 42nd Street Library Mystery, following Murder by Definition (2022), Ray Ambler, curator of the New York Public Library's crime fiction collection, is called to Trinity College in the Bronx to examine a mystery collection for possible acquisition. But Sam Abernathy, curator of that collection, isn't interested in selling--it's the business-savvy college president who is trying to broker the deal. But the academic politics turn deadly when a professor, vice-chair of the faculty senate, is shot by a sniper, and the police think Sam did it. Ambler, a quick judge of character, fingers a different suspect, a troubled older student. But when that student winds up shot, it is Ambler's son John, newly out of prison, who becomes the police's most wanted. Luckily, Ambler's pregnant girlfriend Adele and local bartender good old McNulty are there to help. Lehane's writing style has an old-school, occasionally old-fashioned feel to it (especially regarding the female characters), resulting in a sort of laid-back noir. His library ardor inspired this book's heartfelt dedication to the American Library Association for protecting readers' rights.

Who's even more likely than library curators to be involved in murder most foul? Academics, of course, especially when their number includes librarians and curators. Lehane wastes no time plunging Raymond Ambler, curator of the New York Public Library's crime fiction collection, into the intrigue swirling around fictional Trinity College. While visiting the Bronx campus to explore a tentative offer from Professor Sam Abernathy to sell Trinity's collection to the NYPL, Ray finds that despite the college's financial woes, Trinity president Edward Barnes and faculty senate president Doug Stuart are determined to keep the collection under their own control. The plot thickens when an anonymous donor offers Harry Larkin, Ray's boss at the Public Library, a gift of $200,000 to purchase the collection (assuming of course that it really is up for sale), and when George Olson, the mild-mannered biology professor who served as vice president of the faculty senate, is fatally shot. The tension stirred up by all the infighting abates once the story settles into a familiar groove of questioning the suspects, all of whom piously insist that they're above suspicion, and no one but the police could possibly believe that Sam Abernathy, who served as a sniper in Vietnam, is the killer. But although the murder mystery is much less interesting and intense than the thrusts and counterthrusts among Trinity's faculty, Lehane still has a few tricks up his sleeve, from the news that an eclectic batch of possibly valuable volumes have gone missing from the collection to the non-fatal shooting of Ray himself. Just because the library's swathed in ivy doesn't make it any less dangerous. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.