Rural Cypress, South Carolina, harbors secrets. Trudell ("Tru") Beckett, the assistant librarian, maintains a secret library in the cellar of the public library, begun with library discards when the library went "bookless" at the behest of the city manager. Her Aunt Sal has a secret, winning recipe for apple pie, but isn't entering the cutthroat contest at the upcoming Fall Festival. Worse, someone is trashing the secret library at night. There are also gossips, who jump to conclusions about Tru and detective Jace Bailey and where to find Aunt Sal's recipe. The clash of rumors and secrets makes investigations difficult--Tru can't tell Jace about the secret library, after all--when the town's auto mechanic is found dead in his pickup behind the library, his head bashed with a liquor bottle. Tru claims her only interest is finding out who is trashing the secret library, but her questions put her in the sights of the killer. Despite the unrealistic continuation of the secret library, the main characters continue to grow and support each other.

A librarian's guilty secret is imperiled when murder stalks the library. Upon learning that the town library in Cypress, South Carolina, will be turned into a high-tech center with no physical books, Trudell Becket and a band of like-minded friends manage to save many of the discarded books from the dump and open a library in the basement that they keep hidden from stern library director Lida Farnsworth. When heavy drinker Owen Maynard is found murdered in his truck behind the library, Tru, who's already solved one murder, and her besties, Tori and Flossie, decide to use the knowledge they gained from all those years of reading mysteries to solve the case before the authorities stumble on the secret library. Tru also has another, perhaps unrelated, problem with someone getting into the room at night and tossing books around. Meanwhile, police detective Jace Bailey, who broke Tru's heart in high school, keeps asking her out. Unable to believe that he's really attracted to her, she puts him off despite the gossip that has them practically engaged and Tru pregnant. Delving into gossip and town history reveals that there used to be a speak-easy in the library, and Tru wonders if that's what the intruder is searching for. But there are plenty of suspects who might have killed Maynard, who's rumored to have stolen money from a local church and cheated his garage clients by overcharging. It's not easy to guess the killer in this amusing cozy filled with romantic angst and peculiar characters. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.