Past Due for Murder: A Blue Ridge Library Mystery

Written by Victoria Gilbert

Narrated by Coleen Marlo

Spring has sprung in quaint Taylorsford, Virginia, and the mayor has revived the town's long-defunct May Day celebration to boost tourism. As part of the festivities, library director Amy Webber is helping to organize a research project and presentation by a local folklore expert. All seems well at first-but spring takes on a sudden chill when a university student inexplicably vanishes during a bonfire.

The local police cast a wide net to find the missing woman, but in a shocking turn of events, Amy's swoon-worthy neighbor Richard Muir becomes a person of interest in the case. Not only is Richard the woman's dance instructor, he also doesn't have an alibi for the night the student vanished-or at least not one he'll divulge, even to Amy.

When the missing student is finally discovered lost in the mountains, with no memory of recent events-and a dead body lying nearby-an already disturbing mystery takes on a sinister new hue. Blessed with her innate curiosity and a librarian's gift for research, Amy may be the only one who can learn the truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Feb 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781977342874

Victoria Gilbert

Victoria Gilbert turned her early obsession with reading into a dual career as an author and librarian. A member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and Mystery Writers of America, she enjoys spending her time watching films, gardening, or traveling. She currently resides with her husband, son, and some very spoiled cats in North Carolina.

Reviews for Past Due for Murder

[kmartin802_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the third Blue Ridge Library mystery and Amy Webber finds herself involved once more. Amy is the director of the public library and a gifted researcher. She's helping Mona, a folklorist, and her students do some research on some local myths. She's also having some questions about the way her boyfriend Richard is acting. Amy doesn't have a lot of self-confidence because of the way her former boyfriend Charles treated her.Charles, who is a famous pianist and teacher at Clarion, and his girlfriend Marlis built a mountain retreat near Amy's town. He is grieving because Marlis was recent the victim of a hit and run accident. He seems to want to rekindle things with Amy.When one of Mona's students goes missing, tensions rise. Amy learns that their were conflicts among the students. Mona also has a long-standing conflict with Charles who she believes stole some of her research to develop a song cycle for which he has become famous and rather wealthy too. As Amy learns more about the missing student, she also learns about a mystery that is somehow connected to Mona's research. Two young women - and a bag of gold - went missing after the local May Day celebration in 1879. Some say one of the women, fleeing an unwanted marriage, left because she didn't want to marry and started a new life somewhere else. Others say they were captured by the fae and are dancing in their endless dance. When the missing student is found with a head injury next to Mona's dead body, the case gets even more complex. And Amy finds herself in danger again as she tries to find out the truth.This was an engaging cozy mystery with an interesting main character and a great setting.

[jwitt33 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Past Due for Murder is the third book in the Blue Ridge Library Mysteries series. I have not read the first two in the series, and did have some trouble understanding the relationships between the characters and what actually happened in the first two books. Amy Webber, the Taylorsford Library director, and our main character, just keeps saying versions of "the events that happened last summer" or "the events of the past summer", and I found this disconcerting.Basically, Amy's boyfriend, Richard, is a person of interest in a missing girl case, and Amy has to help clear his name and get to the bottom of the mystery. There is also a side story of a mystery from 1879 when 2 girls went missing, and there's gold involved in that one. And then there's another side story that involves Amy's ex and the hit and run of his girlfriend. This was all a bit much for me. The writing was fine, and the characters were likeable enough, I just spent too much time trying to follow all the different stories and just ended up confused more often than not. As this could in part be due to the fact that I hadn't read the first 2 books in the series, I will be giving this book 3/5 stars. I love cozy mysteries but I don't think I'll be continuing on with this series.3/5 stars.*** I would like to thank NetGalley, Crooked Lane Books, and Victoria Gilbert for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[drmom62 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It seems that the stories in the series keep going downhill. This one is so slow that there isn't much regarding the mystery until the second half of the book. There is plenty of relationship, romance and same-sex relationship affirmation but for a mystery story it is very slow and not very fully developed.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Library director Amy Webber finds herself involved in another murder investigation when a student goes missing and the demanding professor, who researched the local "fae" and lights legend and its connection to a pair of girls who went missing in the 19th century, turns up dead. Her boyfriend, the last to see the missing student, becomes the prime suspect. We meet many colorful characters in the course of the book. There's a lot going on in the book, but I never got things confused as I do in some. I knew who did it early on. I found a couple of things that seemed inconsistent in a place or two but I didn't go back to find what made me think something had been stated differently earlier. This was a fun, escapism read with an interesting setting.

[cyderry · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Amy Webber loves her job as the director of the public library in a small town in Virginia. When the mayor decides to resurrect the old May Day celebrations other things are resurrected as well- namely tales of missing girls and abductions by fairies. When a local professor is found murdered and the last person seen arguing with her was Amy's old boyfriend, Amy is drawn into the search to find the killer.Fun story, well plotted and surprising end!

[ethel55_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It took me a little time to get into this story, but the town of Taylorsford and Amy won me over quickly. I truly liked the atmosphere of the Mountains and how tales of the old fairy folk add wispy bits to both an old story of missing women and the new one. I felt like I was reading very slowly, the descriptions of the area and the relationships were so deep and interesting. It was a good mystery that had many threads running along and Gilbert was able to concoct a good ending.

[lindapanzo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

To me, there's not much better than a library (or book)-themed cozy and this Blue Ridge Library series, of which Past Due for Murder is the third and latest installment, perfectly fits the bill.Amy Webber is the library director at a small town library in Virginia. As is true with cozies, she finds herself solving mysteries. No surprise there. What is surprising is how well-drawn the surrounding cast of characters are in this series and how clever the plots are, with many twists and turns.This series gets better and better with each book. Long may this series run. Highly recommended to cozy mystery fans!!(Note, I received this book from the publisher, via Net Galley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.)

[joannefm2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Amy Webber lives in a small town in Virginia with her Aunt Lydia and works as director for their library. She's got a romance going with her next-door neighbor Richard Muir who teaches dance at a nearby university. But there's a problem - both her parents and Richard's are coming to visit the same weekend and now it seems the 'twain shall meet' and neither Amy nor Richard is looking to make it happen for their own various reasons. There is also the fact that after a visit back home to his family not long ago, he's keeping secrets, and Amy wants to know why.One night Amy is out with a group of people and sees a shadow in the nearby woods that looks a lot like her ex-boyfriend Charles, with whom she had a massive blowup that caused her to leave her previous job at the university. When she gets closer she realizes it certainly is him, and asks him why he's there. It turns out that he'd recently moved to the area to live with his girlfriend Marlis, who was killed not too long ago by a hit-and-run driver, and while Amy feels sorrow for his loss, she feels nothing else for him.When asked her feelings regarding Charles by Professor Mona Raymond, she lets her know that all between her and Charles is in the past. But later Mona confronts her about something she believes Charles may have stolen, and Amy has no idea what she's talking about and hopes to stay out of it. At the same time, a student goes missing and it seems that Richard may have been one of the last people to see her; he naturally becomes a suspect in the disappearance.There is also the fact that the elusive Kurt, one-time resident of Taylorsford who has now returned quite wealthy though perhaps achieving that wealth through not always proper means, has invited Amy to visit an elderly resident of the mountains who has tales of long ago along with a legend of the mountain fairies. Jumping at the chance Amy goes along, but even this visit leads to more questions about the history of the area, including the disappearance of two young women in 1879.Then the missing student appears along with Mona's body, but who committed the murder? Fearing Richard might be poised to take the fall for the murder Amy decides to find out the identity of the real killer, not realizing that in doing so she could inadvertently lose her own life in the process...While this book can be read as a stand alone, there are many references to the last book (which I have not read) and are not really explained. I do think that if you're going to reference things from previous books that you should at least make a full explanation of why someone said or thought that. It's like walking in on people in the middle of a conversation and then having them expect you to know what they're talking about. This is not the way to get new readers, unless the author believes she's fine with the ones she already has. However, it appears to all extents that one would be better served were one to read all three books in order to understand what is going on.I liked the fact that once again as in the first book, there was a mystery-within-a-mystery, which is always fun to decipher, and I think Loie the kitten is adorable. I enjoyed reading about the mountain fairies, and whether they'll real or not I think depends on whether people believe in magic within themselves; but that again is an individual thing.However, as nuanced as it might have been, I did feel that the author was adding bits of her own personal opinions on how things should be in certain areas, and I don't think that this is the business of an author unless you're reading non-fiction. I won't go into this as it wasn't directly thrown at the reader, but the clues are there for anyone who reads the book.There was a nice suspenseful couple of chapters toward the end when Amy was getting closer to finding out the truth, and that was definitely worth reading; although I felt the book was slow in the beginning for various reasons and didn't pick up until over half the book was done. At that point we finally get to the gist of the matter and everything started to come together nicely. All in all, not a bad book and one that would be nice to read on a quiet evening.

[jetangen4571 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

romance, cozy-mystery, murder, librarian, suspense In a college town a whole lot happens below the surface, and this town's librarian seems to find herself in the middle of many things. She lives with her aunt as the family has lived there for several generations and her current love lives nearby and teaches at the college as does her former lover. Lots of integral characters populate this tale which centers around a missing student and an irascible professor who goes missing. Plenty of red herrings and plot twists to ratchet up the suspense before the missing are found and the danger targets the librarian. A very good read! I requested and received a free ebook copy from Crooked Lane Books via NetGalley.