I did not even know Harris wrote mysteries, but I had read several of her Sookie Stackhouse novels! I really liked this book. It is set in a small town in Georgia and our main character is a librarian named Roe Teagarden. Roe is still mourning the loss of her husband Martin.
Roe's world is turned upside down when her former boyfriend returns to Lawrenceton to film the screen version of his best selling novel. The novel is based on the story of Roe and Robin (the author) solving a string of murders committed in this small town. Roe is just beginning to live down the events; all she wants to be left in her own misery.
Roe does not want anything to do with the filming of the movie, but it seems everyone in town has gotten a job working with the crew. At first when Robin calls she hangs up on him and refuses to go to the set. In another interesting twist her stepson, Barrett, is in town working on the film. Barrett feels Roe married his father for his money (because Martin was 15 years older than Roe). Barrett is beyond nasty to Roe, however; she is there for Barrett when the leading lady in the movie shows up dead. Barrett had been intimate with Celia the night before.
Robin and Roe reconnect with each other and soon are kissing like teenagers. Robin shows Roe how she has been living in the past and making themselves miserable. Robin used to date the actress in the film and after her murder he wonders if Roe is next. One afternoon while leaving the library someone came up behind Roe and knocks her to the ground (she was more upset that she ruined the flowers she was carrying from Robin). Robin suspected a young woman who worked for the catering company who was providing food for the film. Tracy was a girl with a history of mental illness. She had stalked another author before Robin. One afternoon Tracy entered Roe's home when she held a knife to Roe's maid. In a struggle Tracy cuts Roe's arm and then falls on her own knife. Tracy admits she has been stalking Robin and that she had struck Celia in the head with her Emmy.
In another turn of events....the blow delivered to Celia's head with her Emmy was not what killed her. Before her death, Celia had gone to the library and checked out books. When the books were returned the secretary at the library started acting very strange and then she disappeared. The secretary was not who she said she was. It turns out she was the younger sister of a radical Black Panther member who made bombs during the sixties. Patricia was not who she seemed to be but she redeemed herself.
One night when alone in the library, one of the crew members from the employee entrance. Roe told the cameraman the library was closed and he would have to come back. He insisted that he had left something in one of the books Celia had checked out. The letter he was searching for blew to Roe's feet. She picked it up and discovered he was Celia's father. Celia had Huntington's disease and was beginning to show symptoms. Will had watched Celia's mother die after losing all her dignity from the disease. So Will drugged Celia and then suffocated her with a pillow. He thought it would be better for her to be remembered as the actress who died tragically rather than losing all control of her body. Roe knew too much now and he could not let her leave except.....the radical secretary had come back to the library to get something from her desk. She saw what was happening and struck Will in the back of the head with a gun. Roe made a pact to never say anything because she had saved her life. Roe takes blood and puts it on a corner of desk to make it look like Will hit his head during the struggle.
Roe ends up moving on with her life and is happy with Robin. I liked the twists and turns of the novel and I also lived the romantic aspect.
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