See Also Deception

March 21, 2016
In Sweazy’s strong second Marjorie Trumaine mystery, set in 1964 in Dickinson, N.Dak., a few months after the events of 2015’s See Also Murder, the book indexer has a lot on her plate. Since her husband, Hank, was blinded and paralyzed in a hunting accident, Marjorie has watched their prairie farm slip into failure. Fortunately, her freelance work for a New York publisher brings in just enough outside income to let them hold on. Marjorie counts on professional assistance from the local librarian, Calla Eltmore, until she gets the devastating news that Calla has committed suicide. Sure that Calla would never kill herself, Marjorie investigates and soon discovers that a clever murderer is operating under the town’s placid facade. Marjorie must use the skills she’s developed as an indexer to see and organize seemingly unrelated ideas, just as she must summon the nerve to act, despite repressive social inhibitions, in this satisfying sequel. Agent: Cherry Weiner, Cherry Weiner Literary Agency.

March 1, 2016
Now that she's lost her nearest neighbors, the Knudsens, to a killer (See Also Murder, 2015), it's time for North Dakota indexer Marjorie Trumaine to lose her closest professional connection--the local librarian she constantly calls to check facts--the same way. Not that the authorities are calling Calla Eltmore's death murder. They're convinced against all reason that she shot herself while she was at work at the Dickinson Public Library, where Marjorie--leaving her husband, Hank, blinded and paralyzed by a hunting accident, in the highly questionable hands of candy-striper Betty Walsh, the young girlfriend of the slain Knudsens' son Jaeger--goes to assure herself that Calla really is gone. Later, at the viewing, Marjorie realizes that right-handed Calla never would have shot herself in the left temple. "It would take a fool not to see it," she tells Hank, and you do have to wonder about the professionalism of Duke Parsons, acting sheriff of Stark County, and deputy Guy Reinhardt. The only person who agrees with Marjorie is the nameless woman who trips and falls on the library stairs during their first meeting and who's carrying a copy of Men and Women that links her to Calla's fondness for Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. A second apparent suicide narrows the list of suspects without clarifying the mystery. In truth, Sweazy gets by on the merest wisp of mystery, along with a severe economy of incidents of any kind.

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May 15, 2016
As a freelance indexer, farmwife Marjorie Trumaine of rural North Dakota values the expertise and friendship of town librarian Calla Eltmore. When Marjorie calls the library with a question and no one answers, she learns that Calla has been found shot at her desk, a suspected suicide. But when Marjorie sees that right-handed Calla was shot in the left temple, she's certain it was murder. That also is the conclusion of the wife of a local professor, who's unduly distraught about Calla's death. By delving into the case, Marjorie not only puts herself in dangerher truck's tires and her telephone line are found slashed one morningbut also feels she neglects her blind and paralyzed husband, Hank, when she leaves him in the care of a trusted neighbor and his not-so-trusted girlfriend. Sweazy brings his second Marjorie Trumaine mystery (after See Also Murder, 2015) to an eminently satisfactory if sad conclusion that's lightened with a lovely flashback, setting the stage for changes ahead for Marjorie. The mid-1960s setting and library orientation bring a hint of coziness to this engaging series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)