Lucy Arlington

Lila gets the boot after twenty years as a reporter; as luck would have it (a lot of luck), her hometown of Dunstan, North Carolina, has a literary agency, and that agency has an opening for an intern. Lila is hired on the spot.

All of this happens in the first ten pages of Buried in a Book. Luckily that pace slows down – but the murder of what appears to be a homeless man pops up pretty quickly, and right on the sofa in A Novel Idea literary agency’s reception area!

This is the first mystery that I’ve read with an eye toward actually figuring out who the killer was; I caught little comments that I considered clues, made note of whose whereabouts were unknown at the time of the murders (yep – at least one more murder happens), and made an educated guess based on the evidence I found.

I was right – and I was right about the killer’s accomplice too; but I’m not considering that a deficit in the novel; I only got one killer right, and I worked this book like a jigsaw puzzle to see the whole picture.

Drawbacks: the main character repeatedly wished she could just rest her head on the broad shoulder of her love interest, so that he could make it all better and solve her problems for her. That’s such an outdated sentiment, even for a 2012 novel. I also couldn’t get past the unlikely setting of a fairly large literary agency handling bestselling authors operating outside of New York City, in a small town in North Carolina. The story was an easy read though, and there were some entertaining characters, including Lila’s psychic mother Althea.… (més)

Lila is laid off from the local newspaper then lands a job at a literary agency where on her first day she is confronted with a body of a man who was chased out of the agency within an hour of Lila's arrival at the agency. Was it murder or something else?

I liked Lila. The agency has a cast of characters working at it. Their descriptions give a good picture of what each is like. Lila wants to know who the man is and who/what killed him so she decides to investigate no matter the cost to her. She also has a few possible romance partners. Her mother is a hoot and her son should have had a good spanking once or twice in his childhood so he wouldn't be so spoiled.

The story line was interesting. I liked how Lila works to solve the murder. She's wrong at times but keeps at it until she finds the answer. The world building is good. I look forward to more of the series.… (més)