Bookmarked to Die

In the 9th book in Miss Zukas Mystery series, we finally are able to return to the life of Ms. Helma Zukas, the exacting librarian who solves mysteries. After what seemed like an eternal wait for the next book in the series, Helma has returned...but a bit different from previous books in the series. She is a bit out of sorts, and seems to have a cloud covering her normally sharpened senses. She has just turned 42-years-old, and after her birthday, Helma has a hard time focusing on her work and her private life. Her co-workers and friends quickly notice, and it is not long before her therapy-fanatic boss, Ms. May Apple Moon, blackmails Helma into attending group counseling sessions to find "inner peace". Adding to Helma's confusion is that Helma's best friend, Ruth, has run away from Minneapolis and her live-in boyfriend, Paul. She quickly takes up residence with Helma, saying she was unable to paint while living with Paul. Helma is not one for a roommate, especially one so creative, messy, and free-spirited as Ruth, and her muddled state quickly goes from bad to worse. When a member of the first group therapy session that Helma attends is found murdered, Helma quickly jumps in to find a murderer. With the help of her long-time friend, Ruth, and in spite of the surprising absence of love-interest police chief, Wayne Gallant, Helma is able to stop a murderous spree with grace and precision. This has always been a great series, and I had missed it in its absence. I love the character of Helma, and her precise mannerisms. She is very tidy, particular about how things are done, and very loyal to her friends. I loved how she allowed herself to have a growing fondness for her cat, Boy Cat Zukas, (what a great name!) in this book, and how she was such a great friend to Ruth. I was a bit dismayed at how small of a role that Wayne Gallant played in this book, and the misunderstanding that seems to hang between them. It was nice to see a small flicker of romance with a new character for Helma, and I am very interested to see how that might play out in future installments. I love this series, and am extremely happy to see its return. The next book in the series is due out in April, 2007 and is titled "Catalogue of Death". The first book in the series is called "Miss Zukas and the Library Murders". Enjoy!

Three cheers! After a long wait, Miss Helma Zukas is back in our lives. The reviews below are more specific about the story line than I need to be here. In real life, the author, Jo Dereske, has gone through the death of her husband since the last Miss Zukas mystery. In this book, there are touches of the author's personal grief and courage as she has Helma overcome deep personal feelings (unspecified) to reclaim the vigor of her life. I was very happy with the book and the promise of a new love in Helma's life.

I am thrilled to have Miss Zukas back - this is one of my favorite series! I love the stories, I love the humor, I love the evocation of place, and I love the writing, but I have a strong preference for character-driven stories, especially series, and that is one of the best part of these. Wilhemina "Helma" Zukas has a very unusual personality, especially for the protagonist of a story. Methodical, meticulous, extremely neat and not particularly an animal lover, it is very unusual to have a character like this sympathetically portrayed. Authors generally to to either "cure" characters like this, having them discover that they really want to be loud, boisterous and reckless; or they turn out to be psychopaths. Miss Zukas is an interesting mixture of individual certainty and slight social ineptness, especially when it comes to intimacy. She is certain of her values, her preferred way of life, and fearless in pursuit of matters of principle. She deals well enough enough with her colleagues, although she is not close to them, she is a perfect public servant to the patrons, and can be quite firm and forceful, but she is uncertain when it comes to close relationships, especially romantic, which in this book add greatly to her confusion. Miss Zukas is balanced by her rather wild, artist friend, Ruth in what is in someways an unlikely pairing, but in other ways an understandable attraction of opposites. It supplies a great deal of the humor and human interest in the book. There is a nice cast of continuing minor characters as well. Her reluctant relationship with the stray Boy Cat Zukas supplies a great deal of understated humor. Her mixture of fastidious relectance to have a pet and her inability to abandon an animal in need are very true to life. There has been some concern about Miss Zukas as a librarian stereotype - being a librarian myself, I understand the concern. While someone like Miss Zukas might be likely to choose to be a librarian, I think that her colleagues are varied enough to make it clear that all librarians are not like Miss Zukas. The office politics, expecially with the library director, Ms. Moon, are only too real and too funny. The one thing that strikes me as odd is that Ms. Zukas seems to be able to get away from the library a lot, but she still works more than most literary characters. In this story, Miss Zukas is having a midlife crisis and Ms. Moon leaps in to "help". Meanwhile, Boy Cat Zukas disappears, and Helma, although she really didn't want him in the first place, is still terribly worried. Just to add to her stress, her friend Ruth drops in for a visit while she resolves her own issues, nearly trashing Miss Zukas's apartment in the process. And this is before anyone gets killed! I hope that this is only the beginning of a renewed spate of books.

After a five year absence, a new book about librarian Wilhelmina Zukas, her friend Ruth, and police chief Wayne Gallant finally graces the mystery shelves. This ninth installment in the series begins on Helma's birthday, and the normally fastidious and staid woman is flustered and off her mark. (If you remember the ending of "Miss Zukas Shelves the Evidence," you shouldn't be surprised.) Is she or is she not in an exclusive relationship with Wayne? Is Ruth just visiting or moving back to Bellehaven, Washington? Does her boss, May Apple Moon, really expect Helma to attend a week's worth of counseling sessions? Where is Boy Cat Zukas hiding? And what's the deal with that new too-perky library employee, Glory Shandy? Helma's personal and professional lives get ever more confusing as two women meet with "accidental" deaths, and both were connected to the library's new Local Authors project, Helma's baby. Of course, she cannot sit idly by while the local police force ignores key clues in what must have been murder. Helma and Ruth become a team again and pursue and interview possible suspects until they eventually uncover the facts. And the culprit. It's not rocket science, but it doesn't have to be. We librarians can especially relate to the situations Miss Zukas finds herself in. This is an enjoyable read for a rainy spring weekend in New England ... or anywhere else, for that matter.

When Miss Helma Zukas awakens on the morning of her forty second birthday she feels a heaviness of spirit and she is troubled because has no reason to feel that way. She is so gloomy that she forgets that the local author project is getting underway that night. She rallies to the occasion and she has a full house of writers who want to be represented in the collection. All goes smoothly but when people are leaving, attendee Molly is killed in a hit and run. A few days later, Tanya who also was at the local author gathering was murdered when somebody pushed her down a flight of steps. Chief of Police Wayne Gallant, who has been cold to Helma since her forty-second birthday warns her against interfering on his homicide infestation. She promptly finds reasons to figure out who the killer is and almost winds up as murder victim number three. When she is not searching for a killer she is seeking her cat, who got lost when Helma's friend took him for a week. It has been a long time since the last Miss Zukas mystery but it was well worth the wait because BOOKMARKED TO DIE is one of the most enjoyable books in the series. The heroine is an honest and loyal person whose stubborn streak gets more provincial the older she gets. She is an independent feisty woman who marches to her own drummer and has many friends because they know they can count on her. This character driven mystery will grab and hold the reader's attention from the first page to last. Harriet Klausner