Death By Beach Read
It’s spring in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and Lucy and Connor have moved into their new family home, a historic cottage on Nags Head Beach. The house needs a lot of renovations, but they worked hard over the winter to get it ready. Lucy is now happily immersed in her work at the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library, planning her wedding and decorating the house, and keeping Charles company. That is until a dead body disrupts their peaceful new abode.
The first night Lucy’s alone in the house, with the company of Charles, the library cat, she hears sounds. Investigating, they see footsteps in the dust of the unfinished living room, and the door to the outside is open. Lucy’s reminded that the house is said to be haunted: forty years ago, the teenage daughter of the owners fled in the night and never again stepped foot inside her family home.
But the sounds have an all-too-human origin, and one evening Lucy and Connor find the dead body of a man they don’t even recognize in their kitchen. They soon realize he has a long-time connection to their new, old family home. They are both spooked, and so is Charles the cat. Lucy’s forced to find out what happened all those years ago and why it’s threatening her happiness today.
Meanwhile, the Classic Novel Reading Club is reading The House of the Seven Gables by Nathanial Hawthorne, a book about another old family home full of secrets. Can Lucy find parallels to her situation in Hawthorne’s fiction before the killer strikes again?
The Details
Series: A Lighthouse Library Mystery – Book #9
Author: Eva Gates
Genre/Category: Cozy – Amateur Sleuth/Library
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
ISBN: 1643859102
Page Count: 288
Rating: 
The Review
Death By Beach Read makes me want to spend time at the beach and a library. I am happy to read about Lucy and Connor’s upcoming wedding, and their new family home sounds charming. Even Charles, the library cat, seems to love his new place. But when rumors of hauntings surround them, Lucy and Connor do their best to ignore the stories. But not long after moving in, they find a stranger’s body on their kitchen floor, and Lucy cannot relax until she solves the mystery of the man’s identity, how he got into their house, and who killed him.
Lucy is always a bit hard to take as a character; she can sometimes be a bit on the foolish and unintelligent side. She doesn’t always say and do the right thing and never seems to learn from past mistakes, but… it is easy to love her despite her faults. Connor would make an outstanding mayor; any small town would be thrilled by his dedication and hard work. The lighthouse library would be a dream for readers and writers to enjoy. And of course, Charles, the library cat, who now appears to be a permanent fixture in Lucy’s home, is a cat lover’s dream come true. I would love to spend my evenings in their new family home enjoying the view.
There are stories of how the old family home was haunted and how the owner’s teenage daughter was terrified one night and never stepped foot inside the house again. The body Lucy and Connor find is not anyone they recognize, and they can’t figure out how he got into the locked house. But if not for Charles, they might not live long enough to find out either. Lucy is determined to find out who is ruining her and Connor’s new home and putting a damper on their future.
The suspect pool is small and includes community members, the victim’s family, and an unexpected spouse. The evidence is thin but enlightening, and once the reader has all the facts, they. Once they figured out how the victim was getting into their family home, they changed all the locks on all the doors before moving in; it doesn’t take long for them to figure out his identity. But the motive for killing him is elusive. The killer is a fun character and not easy to find but definitely adds some tension and action to the story. It isn’t until the very end that Lucy and Charles, her beloved library cat understand the why of and the who of it all and puts this case to bed.
It isn’t until the very end of Death By Beach Read that Lucy and Charles understand the why of and the who of it all and discover the killer, a treasure, and reunite a lost, lonely woman with the world. The ending will have readers smiling and cheering. I, along with all of the fans of this series, can’t wait for the next installment and Lucy’s wedding!
The Author
Vicki Delany (Eva Gates) is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers and a national bestseller in the U.S. She has written more than thirty books: clever cozies to Gothic thrillers to gritty police procedurals, to historical fiction and novellas for adult literacy.
Vicki lives and writes in bucolic Prince Edward County, Ontario. She is a past president of the Crime Writers of Canada. Her work has been nominated for the Derringer, the Bony Blithe, the Ontario Library Association Golden Oak, and the Arthur Ellis Awards.
Readers may enjoy another book in the “A Lighthouse Library Mystery,” Deadly Ever After, or from another Eva Gates/Vicki Delany series such as “A Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery” and book number seven, A Three Book Problem.
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