Never underestimate the power of a librarian. Rachel Weisz in 1999’s The Mummy taught us that, and C.M. Waggoner’s latest book, The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society, is another installment in the subgenre of librarians cleverly outsmarting malevolent supernatural forces.
The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society is a genre mashup, both a murder mystery and a story about demons whimsically wreaking havoc, with meta commentary sprinkled throughout. Sherry Pinkwhistle is a librarian in Winesap, a small town in upstate New York. At first blush, she has a simple life—a cozy home, a satisfying job, a cat named Sir Thomas Cromwell—and, of course, the ability to solve the rampant number of murders that occur within Winesap’s borders.
Quite a lot of murders, actually. So many, in fact, that it should have alarmed everyone in town, especially Sherry—but every time the thought rises in her or others’ minds, it floats out of reach, as if something was making them forget.
But never mind that. Sherry’s life evokes that of Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher in the TV series of my childhood, Murder She Wrote. That conceit is intentional, not only by Waggoner as the author, but within the confines of Sherry’s world, although she doesn’t realize this at first.
There’s quite a few things that Sherry and the rest of Winesap don’t notice, in fact. They feel an underlying dread that things aren’t as they should be, but when that feeling comes to the surface, reality glitches and their worries disappear. The time period, for example, is deliberately ambiguous; cell phones don’t seem to be a thing but then someone gasps at our protagonist at one point: “What happened to the internet, Sherry?” [p. 253] (Don’t worry, Sherry will find out the answer, for better or worse, before the end of the book.)
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The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society
The story is slow moving at first, starting out with one murder before moving on to the death that emotionally shatters Sherry. As she works to solve the latest crime, she runs into new and old friends in Winesap, who support her (kind of) as she uncovers what is really going on. There’s Father Barry, the handsome, dorky priest; Janine, the no-nonsense, fashionable pal she has weekly tea and gossip sessions with; and Charlotte, a younger woman who clicks with Sherry after the librarian solves the murder of her philandering husband. However, the three, who presumably are part of the demon-hunting society referenced in the title, never fully come together. They feel peripheral, more like add-ons (delightful add-ons, granted) to give Sherry someone to bounce ideas off, rather than get much support from.
Sherry is more developed. Early on, for example, she surprises herself by her callousness, conceding that she “spent so much time pretending to be a nice old lady from a book that her actual, somewhat strange and ghoulish personality tended to take her by surprise.” [page 21]
That ghoulish personality comes in handy, however, as she works to uncover what’s really going on in Winesap. (And why does she feel she has to be the friendly neighborhood librarian rather than herself? The game, as one inspector might say, is afoot!) In the beginning, we get hints as to why she’s ended up in this small, out-of-the-way town, and why something in her past led to her becoming the town’s Jessica Fletcher. The major death in The Village Library also hits her hard, as it should, and gives her more dimension than anyone else in the book. (It also makes the moniker “cozy fantasy” not exactly fit, though I suppose this novel is as cozy as any story with multiple murders could be.)
While the “demon-hunting society” doesn’t get off the ground, The Village Library still entertains. The meta commentary on high fantasy and murder mysteries, for example, will tickle anyone who’s a fan of either. There are some fun moments, such as when her cat, Sir Thomas Cromwell, appears to be inhabited from time to time by the ghost of the actual historical figure, leaving Sherry, for example, to think that there’s “not very much difference in the behavior of a cat and a high-handed, chauvinistic Tudor autodidact in the body of a cat. The only thing to truly set them apart was the vocabulary.” [page 104]
The characters and plot mechanics, however—including, sadly, the possessed feline—feel like jigsaw pieces from different puzzles. Waggoner has done genre mashups well—Unnatural Magic and The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry are both delightful reads—but in The Village Library, the combination never quite gels into something cohesive, much less greater than the sum of its parts.
If you’re new to Waggoner, I wouldn’t start here. Pick up one of her earlier works instead. Still, I don’t regret the time I spent reading The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society; there’s enough there to enjoy, especially if you’re a big fan of murder mysteries, though the actual mystery might not have as many twists and turns as you’d like. The book also tees up the potential for a sequel without, blessedly, ending on a cliffhanger. If that novel ever comes to be, I’d still give it a read, even though this one didn’t possess me.
The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society is published by Ace.
Read an excerpt.
