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The Broken Spine by Dorothy St. James

Posted on August 14, 2022 by chargraves

Beloved Bookroom Mystery, #1

Book cover for The Broken Spine by Dorothy St. James
Link to The Broken Spine on Goodreads

My Review

This story takes place in Cypress, a rural town in South Carolina. Where the town councilman and the mayor are pushing to transform their town into their area’s version of Silicon Valley. These plans are upsetting a lot of the library patrons and locals who worry about the gentrification of Cypress once the wealthy technology companies move into town.

Trudell “Tru” Beckett is the assistant librarian. And she is not happy about the developments at the library. Part of the plan is to convert the library to a bookless technology center which involves sending all of the physical books off to the landfill. Tru decides to fight back by saving as many of the books as she can and depositing them in the library’s basement to start a secret bookroom.

She and others were busy working on this when the town councilman gets killed upstairs in the library. Tru ends up being the first person to arrive at the scene of the crime, but she isn’t willing to admit to what she was up to in order to provide herself with an alibi. So, she becomes the police’s prime suspect.

Tru jumps into the investigation because she has her own ideas on who the guilty party is and that includes people she really cares about.

I enjoyed the way the author lets us know what the changes to the town and the library, specifically, mean to the characters in the book. I felt invested in their cause.

I truly hope a bookless library doesn’t come to my neighborhood anytime soon. However, some of the things the library planned to offer did sound intriguing and were things I would enjoy. But…a book without paper books? Nope. Sounds like a nightmare.

I did get a kick out of some of Tru’s friends and look forward to getting to know them better. Flossie is a published writer, but she won’t say what kind of books she writes and I’m curious to find out what her secret is! She’s a feisty gal and I like her. I also like Tru’s mom; her antics made me laugh.  Tru’s bestie Tori is growing on me, too.

There is also Jace, the detective Tru shares a past with back from their high school days.  He was quite the jerk back in the day. Now? Well, he likes cats so he can’t be all bad. We’ll have to see how things develop.

I would recommend this cozy to people who like mysteries involving libraries, books about books, and stories that include a character who uses a wheelchair (Flossie).

Goodreads Blurb

Trudell Becket finds herself in a bind when her library is turned into a state-of-the-art bookless ‘technological center’. A library with no books breaks Trudell’s book-loving heart and she decides to rescue hundreds of beloved tomes slated for the recycle center. Under the cover of darkness, Trudell sets up a secret book room in the library’s basement and opens it to her loyal patrons.

When the town councilman, who was a vocal supporter of the library’s transformation is crushed by an overturned shelf of DVDs, Trudell becomes the prime suspect. She was the only person in the library at the time of his murder, or so the police believe. But the visitors to Trudell’s secret bookroom were actually all there too.

If she tells the police about the backdoor patrons who were in the library at the time of the murder, she’d have to explain about the secret book room and risk losing the books. To keep herself out of jail, Trudell–with the help of a group of dedicated readers–decides to investigate. She quickly finds herself on the same page with a killer who would love to write her final chapter.

Where to Find More from Dorothy St. James (a pseudonym for Dorothy McFalls)

Author Website | Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

Dorothy St. James also writes the following cozy series: A Southern Chocolate Shop Mysteries and A White House Gardener Mysteries.

So far, I have read the first two in the Southern Chocolate Shop series and liked them very much.

I also want to check out the White House Gardener series. I really enjoyed another cozy series I read that used the White House as a setting (White House Chef).

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