January Thaw

October 21, 2013
In Lourey’s wry ninth Mira James outing (after 2012’s December Dread), the high-spirited heroine stays true to her pattern of finding a new homicide for every month that she lives in the tiny town of Battle Lake, Minn. This particular month’s case involves a man’s body discovered under the frozen surface of a local skating pond. As Mira tries to identify the stiff, she also looks into the nonfatal shooting of the local police chief, Gary Wohnt. This while running the library, reporting for the local paper, trying to obtain a private investigator’s license, and dealing with a boyfriend, Johnny Leeson, she adores but doesn’t trust. Mira’s main ally, the 80-year-old, outspokenly horny Mrs. Berns, can either seem delightfully eccentric or like a pain in the gluteus maximus—like Battle Lake’s other residents—but fans of smalltown mysteries will be charmed. Agent: Victoria Skurnick, Levine Greenberg Literary Agency.

October 15, 2013
If it's January in Minnesota, it must be time for amateur sleuth Mira James to find another corpse. It's a pretty decent life Mira has made for herself in the village of Battle Lake (population 747) as the head librarian, a part-time reporter and a not-yet-licensed detective--if you don't count her habit of stumbling across corpses on a regular basis. Her most recent find is a frozen body near the dunking hole for the Winter Wonderland Festival. What makes the discovery more poignant is that the deceased, Maurice Jackson, tried to rescue Mira and her man-hungry octogenarian assistant, Mrs. Berns, from two of his fellow gang members. A letter that a possible ancestor of Maurice's wrote in 1865 compels Mira to dig more deeply to find out what really brought Maurice to Battle Lake. In addition, she takes on a case involving a missing descendant of the original owner of Prospect House, a mansion-turned-Civil War museum, and tangles with the police chief, the Battle Lake mayor/pet psychologist and her narcoleptic dachshund, and an ex-boyfriend who stirs up needless trouble between Mira and her current squeeze--not to mention that Prospect House ghost. You have to wonder what Mira will do when she runs out of calendar months. Marry her perfect boyfriend and get out of the beleaguered police chief's way? Lourey (December Dread, 2012, etc.) has a feel for small-time life but not for when to stop introducing whackadoodle eccentrics who are not so much comic as annoying.

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January 1, 2014

Librarian Mira James knew Maurice Jackson, the young black man from Chicago who had recently become a library regular, because he had asked for local history books about Battle Lake, MN. So she is horrified when his corpse floats just below the ice during the community's Winter Wonderland festival. Maurice's link to Battle Lake appears to be the historic Prospect House Civil War Museum. If Mira can tease out the clues left behind, perhaps she can fulfill a promise made 150 years earlier. Alas, Mira's own personal meltdown threatens to throw her off course, and readers familiar with her struggles with alcohol will worry. VERDICT Lourey's trademark humor effectively complements the soft-boiled investigating by the in-training PI Mira James. Those looking for an engaging, multigenerational small-town mystery that tackles contemporary issues can't miss with this entry, number nine in the series (after December Dread).

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2013
Mira James, part-time librarian, part-time newspaper columnist, part-time private-eye-in-training, is still shaken from her almost fatal encounter with the Candy Cane Killer (December Dread, 2012). She is also, once again, in deep trouble. After being mugged in an alley by two thugs, she sees one of them way sooner than she could have imagined. This time, he's faceup under the ice of West Battle Lake. Mira, being Mira, can't just walk away from the murder. Much to the chagrin of Police Chief Gary Wohnt, she begins her own investigation. Just to make things a little more chaotic for Mira, the murder inquiry ends up thawing out a cold case reaching back to the Civil War. The latest in Lourey's entertaining Murder-by-Month mysteries has lots of humor and a colorful cast of characters, some new, and some from earlier books. Who can resist a mystery that includes a daredevil octogenarian sidekick; a flashy, plant-whispering mayor; some really bad villains; and a little girl ghost?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)