Reading Up a Storm

 Reading Up a Storm (2016) by Eva Gates

Lucy Richardson, a librarian at Bodie Island's Lighthouse Library, has helped host a surprise party to celebrate her boss's tenure at the library. Bertie James has worked there ten years. The party goes off without a hitch, but due to a gathering storm in the Outer Banks the festivities are cut short. Lucy has snuggled down in her apartment above the library floors all set to read more chapters of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson when she notices lights out on the rolling waves. Surely no one would be out on a boat in this weather...Then she notices more lights onshore, bobbing as if they were attached to moored boats. Not sure of what she's seeing, she calls the Coast Guard and alerts them.

Next morning she learns that William Williamson, a former inhabitant of Nag's Head (the little town on Bodie Island) who made good in the oil fields of Alaska and has just recently come home, and his fiancee Marlene Bergen, were out on a boat which came apart in the storm. They survived the ordeal only long enough for Williamson to found dead in another boat the next morning. But this is no accident...someone stabbed him and left him to die. Lucy finds herself involved when one of her friends comes under suspicion. 

Stephanie Stanton, a lawyer in Raleigh is home caring for her mother who was recently in an accident, had just recently discovered that Williamson was the father who had abandoned her mother when he realized his little fling had resulted in a pregnancy. The detective in charge of the case reasons that Stephanie could have killed out of resentment, revenge, or even the hope of inheritance. Lucy is sure her friend didn't do it and starts an investigation of her own. It doesn't take long to discover that Williamson wasn't precisely what he seemed and had a knack for creating enemies wherever he went. But who really wanted him dead?

I enjoy a good cozy mystery as much as the next cozy mystery reader. And I fully expected to enjoy this one--set in library set up in a lighthouse? Sounds great. Librarian amateur detective? You bet. Working in the dark and stormy night theme? Why not? Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. I didn't take to Lucy at all. She has an incredible knack for saying all the wrong things at the wrong time. She's not particularly intuitive and not really much of a detective. In fact, there's not a whole lot of detecting going on at all. Things just...happen. She continually gets maneuvered into situations and actions that she doesn't want because she doesn't seem to have a backbone and/or to know the word "No." Don't even talk to me about her interactions with Louise Jane (whose character is the most pointless in the book as far as I'm concerned). Lucy's dilemma with being attracted to two men (who are, of course, both attracted to her) wasn't particularly interesting and her sudden epiphany about which one she really loves seemed to come out of nowhere. But I wasn't convinced that it was a solid epiphany because about a chapter later she's thinking about how attractive the dead man's son is. And, gee, he's interested in her too. (Is every single male? that's what I'm thinking at this point.) 

The mystery was decently set up but I would have appreciated better clues and better detection. ★★

First lines: It was a dark and stormy night.
                  I've always wanted to say that.

Last line: "A haunted lighthouse, of course."
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Deaths = one stabbed