A Cozy Mystery Book Review

By Lynn Hutchins | Information/Circulation, Central Library 

Charlie Harris, a librarian in Athena, Mississippi, finds himself in the middle of another murder investigation in Classified as Murder, the second book in Miranda James’s Cats in the Stacks series.

Accompanied by his giant cat named Diesel, Charlie gets started on a rare book inventory for an eccentric library patron named James Delacorte, who thinks someone is stealing from his expensive private library. Soon after they begin, Delacorte is found dead at his desk, and Charlie finds himself with a bigger task than inventorying books. The story really heats up when a highly valued copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s "Tamerlane" goes missing. When a second murder occurs, Charlie realizes that he and Diesel must solve the case before the killer strikes again. Miranda James began writing the Cats in the Stacks series in 2010 with Murder Past Due. The latest book in the series, published in 2020, is called Careless Whiskers.

Did you know that Miranda James is really Mississippi author Dean James? Currently Dean is a librarian in the Texas Medical Center in Houston. His first novel, Cruel as the Grave, was published in 2000. In August 2010 he launched a new series writing as Miranda James. The first book under this name, Murder Past Due, spent four weeks on the extended New York Times bestseller list for mass market paperbacks. The next book in the series, Classified as Murder published in May 2011, also hit the New York Times list.