Sunday 20 August 2023

A Death at Seascape House

Finished August 13
A Death at Seascape House (Jemima Jago Mystery, #1) by Emma Jameson


This is an intriguing mystery set in the Isles of Scilly off the Cornish coast in southwest England. It is part of a series featuring special collections librarian Jemima Jago. As the book opens, Jemima (Jem) has returned to the Isles to do a special project regarding a private collection of books on the island. Jem hasn't been to the Isles since she left after her grandmother's death when she was a teenager. That loss occurred shortly after another tragedy that we gradually learn about through the course of the novel. 
Jem is waiting to meet a friend at a pub, but her friend Pauley is late, and she subsequently engages in a new friendship with the bartender Micki. 
Pauley is also the owner of the large collection that Jem will be cataloguing, and has recently told Jem that one of the unique books in the collection has gone missing. When she finds out that the main suspect is Edith a woman who she hated back when she was a kid, she decides to go to Edith's house to try to recover the book. Instead she finds a crime scene, with Edith dead and the place ransacked. With the chief of police prejudiced against her, Jem must try to find the true culprit of the crime to clear her own name. 
As she encounters the locals, she must also deal with her own past there, and the tragedy that she was blamed for back then. 
I enjoyed the main character, as well as many of the supporting ones, from Micki and Pauley, to Jem's old boyfriend Rhys, and the new sergeant heading the local police force. 
This looks like it will be an interesting series. 

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