Book Review: Fundraising for the Dead by Sheila Connolly

At The Society for the Preservation of Pennsylvania Antiques, fundraiser Eleanor "Nell" Pratt solicits donations--and sometimes solves crimes. When a collection of George Washington's letters is lost on the same day that an archivist is found dead, it seems strange that the Society president isn't pushing for an investigation. Nell goes digging herself, and soon uncovers a long, rich history of crime.

This was one of the "pocket books" paperbacks in my work's library book sale, and I read it at the reference desk and then put it back rather than buying it. lol  It was obviously the library/archives/museum element that drew me in, as I work in a library with archives. This was a very interesting, well-written mystery that really made the time fly at the reference desk.

Fundraising does not interest me as a profession, but Nell is also a former English major and therefore hangs out in the stacks and archives as much as she can. She knows a lot about the Society and how it works so she can write and speak knowledgeably about it, and this knowledge and her professional relationships with Society staff and donors puts her in the perfect position to investigate the mystery of the disappearing items. A middle-aged Society board member whose ancestors' archival collection is in the archives starts making noise about not being able to find some letters between George Washington and her ancestor. In order to soothe her, Nell visits the cataloger in charge of logging the archival collections into the computer system. He's a nerdy, shy, antisocial dude who wouldn't say boo to a goose, but he likes Nell. He tells her a lot of items have gone missing, and it's all valuable stuff. Connolly really nailed the whole "put it down somewhere it's not supposed to be and it's gone" aspect of archives and libraries; that is a real problem, and it makes the situation tricky since someone could have just misshelved the items and they don't want to raise a false alarm. Nell decides to deal with it after a big fundraising dinner the Society is throwing that evening. She goes to work the next morning and finds the cataloger dead. Nell goes to the Society's President, who she has been dating on the down-low, about the missing items and he gives her excuses and platitudes but does nothing. She and the legacy board member start to suspect the President, and launch an investigation of their own, alongside the board member's cousin who works in the FBI. All in all, a very absorbing story! 

This is the first book in the "Museum Mystery" series, of which there are several. Sheila Connolly has written lots of different mystery series, and judging by this book, she's good at them. I'd be down to read the rest, but who knows when, as I have tons of my own books to read. I'm not sure whether this counts as a cozy mystery, as there isn't much coziness, but it's not gritty or anything either. The setting is cozy mystery-friendly/adjacent. Anyway, I definitely recommend this book and series. 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: April 27
From: the library
Status: returned to the library

See my aesthetics moodboard for this series

Representation: middle-aged characters (40s-60s), which seems more common in mysteries series than other genres, but idk if that counts. Also female character-heavy. 1 Black very minor female character

Cover notes: I like the look and vibe. It's very library-y. It is not, however, accurate to the murder in the book.

Trigger warnings: murder, death, dead bodies, blood, attempted murder, a person in locked in a basement wine cellar and left to die by suffocation (they are found in time), a character seduces others to get information out of them without their knowledge and then dumps them, characters bug someone and listen in illegally and without their knowledge or consent, gun mentions, police and FBI, theft of historical archival items, selling aforementioned on the black market

Book review: Curioddity by Paul Jenkins

I bought Curioddity from the dollar store because the cover and the summary were intriguing.
Amazon summary:
Will Morgan is a creature of habit―a low-budget insurance detective who walks to and from work with the flow of one-way traffic, and for whom imagination is a thing of the distant past. When a job opportunity enters the frame in the form of the mysterious Mr. Dinsdale―curator of the ever so slightly less-than-impressive Curioddity Museum―Will reluctantly accepts the task of finding a missing box of levity (the opposite of gravity). What he soon learns, however, is that there is another world out there―a world of magic we can only see by learning to un-look at things―and in this world there are people who want to close the Curioddity museum down. With the help of his eccentric new girlfriend Lucy, Will will do everything he can to deliver on his promise to help Mr. Dinsdale keep the Curioddity Museum in business.

Sounds cool, doesn't it? I love books about finding hidden magic and museums, so I was sold. It sat on my bookshelf for a while, then in my mailbox waiting for me to grab and read it during a reference desk shift, until I finally did.

I enjoyed this book, although not quite as much as I thought. It started off boring and depressing, then sped up and because more interesting, just like Will's life. The writing style was clearly trying to be clever and funny, but came off as kind of jerky (the movement, not the adjective form of jerk or the meat), at least until the story picked up and I got caught up in it. The author has definitely read Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, and you see their influence in the most fast-paced, high stakes parts of the books. It's not as good as Adams, of course. There was a running gag that involved Will getting hit on the head with a heavy object again and again, which I did not find funny. I did find the smartphone with the sentient AI amusing, once we got past the tedious "old man yells at technology" bit we inexplicably get despite Will being 32 and not an old man.

Will's dull life is explained by his parents. His mother was a dazzling scientist who taught him about magic and wonder and conspiracy theories (idk) who died? in a physics accident. His grieving father banned all magic, wonder and science and pressured him heavily into living a stable, safe, and predictable life identical to his own. There's the usual "parent's desire for child's safety/a certain profession in order to not lose the child actually pushes child away" thing, but I won't go into it. Surprisingly, Will's mother's "death" isn't solved; perhaps Jenkins has another Curioddity book in the works? It didn't feel like a beginning of a series.

Mr. Dinsdale is the typical kinda crazy kinda wise kooky old man who has a connection with magic or whatever and teaches our hero to see the world differently etc. etc. You get it. Lucy, Will's love interest and girlfriend of all of one (1) date, is basically a manic pixie dream girl who dresses like a hippie, including wearing an oft-mentioned anklet, and says stuff like "groovy!" and "epic fail!", often in the same sentence. Both these statements date the book, and I found them cringy. Her personality basically just consists of her being bubbly and up for anything. This is unsurprising because male authors are notoriously bad at fleshing out female characters, especially love interests. They make them pretty and quirky and then stop there. Given how boring Will is, I don't understand Lucy's attraction to him, especially given his behavior. Such is the mystery of the MPDG/depressed guy's relationship. Lucy's magic/thrift shop and the Curioddity museum have some magical space-time connection that isn't really explained, despite my wishing it would be.

Anyway, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to while away an afternoon. You need a strong tolerance for ~*magic is everywhere if you know where to look*~ type stories, as well as fantasy/science fiction hybrid stories. I liked it but not enough to be sure I'll keep it, since I have such limited shelf space.

Cover notes: I like the cover, although it is definitely for a different book, one much scarier than this one. There are no isolated eyes or eye motifs in this book, and Will never wears a hat or carries an umbrella. I like the colors and font though. The book is new enough that there are no other covers to compare this one to.

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: early November
From: dollar store
Format: hardcover
Status: giving away probably