Buried in a Book
Lucy Arlington


ISBN-10:
0425246191
ISBN-13: 978-0425246191
Publisher: Penguin Group
Line: Berkley
Release Date: February 7, 2012
Pages: 304
Retail Price: 7.99




Genre:
Mystery
Rating:

After losing her job as a journalist at the age of forty-five, Lila Wilkins accepts an internship at A Novel Idea, a thriving literary agency in North Carolina. Being paid to read seems perfect to Lila, although it's difficult with the cast of quirky co-workers and piles of query letters. But when a penniless aspiring author drops dead in the agency's waiting room-and Lila discovers a series of threatening letters-she's determined to find out who wrote him off.

Review

When small-town journalist Lila Wilkins gets laid off from her job at The Dunston Herald, she panics; she’s a single mom with a son who’s about to head off to college – how on earth is she supposed to pay his tuition if she doesn’t have a salary? Things start looking up, though, when she lands a gig as an intern at local literary agency A Novel Idea.

Lila’s over the moon at the thought of getting paid to read, and she goes into her new job brimming with optimism, but when a homeless aspiring author named Marlette keels over dead in the reception area on her first day at the office, she’s forced to wonder if A Novel Idea is the right place for her. It looks to Lila as though the man’s death was a homicide, but the police don’t seem too anxious to investigate. She knows she won’t feel safe working at the agency until she figures out who killed Marlette and why. Can she use her investigative skills to get to the bottom of the mystery, or will she end up becoming the subject of the agency’s next true crime bestseller?

Buried in a Book is the first of Lucy Arlington’s Novel Idea Mysteries. The premise of this series is fantastic; fun and unique, it really had me looking forward to Arlington’s debut. Unfortunately, however, for my money, Buried in a Book just doesn’t live up to its potential. Arlington’s prose starts out witty but quickly descends into overwrought. The story is cluttered with superfluous details and digressions that do nothing to forward the plot. The setup is implausible; the mystery, while not wholly unsatisfying, is a tad convoluted; and Arlington doesn’t provide Lila with nearly a compelling enough reason to want to investigate the death of a vaguely threatening homeless man with whom she interacted for less than five minutes, let alone become borderline obsessed with avenging his death.

Lila is somehow simultaneously underdeveloped as a character and yet still rather unlikable; you don’t get a good sense of her looks, her background, or her likes and dislikes, but you do come away with the knowledge that she’s judgmental, officious, and projects one heck of an air of moral superiority. The book’s supporting cast isn’t much better, being composed almost entirely of stereotypes and cardboard cutouts. And none of the relationships that develop between the characters over the course of the story feel genuine or earned.

Now, I’m not saying that this book is bad, or even that it’s not worth reading; I just think I’m not Arlington’s intended audience, and as such, the book and its characters rubbed me the wrong way. If you like your mysteries extra-cozy and your heroines altruistic and principled, give Buried in a Book a try; if, on the other hand, you like for your books to come with a bit of a bite, you’d probably do well to focus your search elsewhere.

Reviewed by Kat


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