Sulari Gentill is best known for her Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, but if you're looking for a delightful stand alone novel, pick up The Woman in the Library. Ms. Gentill takes the reader to Boston, specifically to the Boston Public Library, and introduces us to an author visiting from Australia. (Ms. Gentill alsolives in Australia.) Hannah is writing a novel and receiving feedback on "the dailies" from a local colleague Leo who mostly critiques her country-specific language. We share in the novel, which centers around Hannah represented by Winifred (nicknamed Freddie) finding three new friends at the library, who she names Freud Girl, Heroic Chin, and Handsome Man. They hear the scream of a woman being murdered. The character development through the newly evolving friendships is balanced perfectly by the central and side mystery plots. Overlaying this like a well-crafted sauce is the correspondence from Leo to Hannah.
The "book within a book" concept is difficult to execute well, but in The Woman in the Library it feels natural, almost as if one can't imagine the novel any other way. This is my first Gentill mystery and I can't envisage it being my last. And not just because I was born in Boston and she writes nicely about my city. I can say I'll be giving this book to an author friend of mine with my highest recommendation.
Thanks for reading,
Curtis
P.S. This review was written and published while travelling 450 miles per hour, 34,000 feet in the air, in an aluminum tube. Books can never be replaced but technology can really help discussion about them.
On the recommendation of Curt Remarks, I read this wonderful take on a murder mystery. The book within the book format was very well handled by Ms. Gentill, and in fact there was a third book at play in the background, the fictionally best selling noir novel of the person who the police suspected of being the killer in the current case, a person who had already been convicted of one murder and served prison time for that event. The protagonist Hannah has fallen in love with Cain despite the evidence against him. The question one must ask is who is real in this fiction, and who is a figment of the fiction writer's imagination. It's very clever, and I will read more Sulari Gentill. Thanks to CR for the recommendation.
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