Libraries, a sacred and mystical space. At least, it is if you are a dedicated reader. However, in The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk it is also a place where the absolutely horrendous happens. A one of a kind book goes missing. Liesl is a librarian at a university library who happens to be on a sabbatical to write a book when she gets a call to come in as something has happened at the library. Upon arriving she discovers that the head library, Christopher, has had a stroke and is in a coma at the hospital. A priceless manuscript had just arrived at the library and is supposedly in his safe and he is the only one who knew the code. Something that normally Liesl would also know but it had been changed while she was out. As she and the other faculty start investigating things start to get strange. Liesl seems to be the only one pushing to report the missing manuscript to the police as no one else wants to scare the donors. When another librarian goes missing Liesl starts to become extremely worried that it may not just be missing and that there may be more at play in her library.
This book was rather interesting. It is a mystery book about something having gone missing and then someone goes missing. In many ways it sounds like a stereotypical mystery novel and the only reason it really stood out to me is that it takes place in a university library. I will admit that is probably the main reason I decided to read it in the first place. However, due to the setting being a library it adds numerous extra layers that are not typically present in this kind of mystery. Usually, there are police sniffing around trying to figure out what had happened but there aren’t any here. The university and its faculty keeps applying pressure to not inform the police as it doesn’t want that kind of publicity. While I can understand where they are coming from I still think it was silly of them not to inform the police. Without the police though Liesl has to investigate entirely on her own and has to navigate campus politics while doing so. It creates this incredibly constrained atmosphere in which she navigates that I found rather intriguing. There are also other layers though that come into play. I mentioned the campus politics but there are also the somewhat stereotypical office politics as well. Liesl has to navigate through the library faculty and deal with who doesn’t like who and who is at odds for research purposes and who wants to take advantage of the library’s resources and who almost had an affair and the mysterious employee who no one really knew who just disappeared. There are multiple intricate levels that she has to work through as she tries to figure out what happened and all it really ends up doing is isolating her and making her feel like she can’t trust anyone. The actual mystery of what happened to the manuscript was well developed all on its own and then to add all of these other layers was great. It really felt well fleshed out and detailed and watching how it all unfolds was really interesting. Overall, very well done and earns four out of five stars.
This book was a great example of a mystery novel and one that was really well done. If you happen to enjoy that kind of work than I would suggest you consider trying it. Unlike a lot of other mystery novels, this one happens to be pretty tame in terms of violence and graphic content as the crime is a missing manuscript from a library. That being said it does contain significant references to mental health issues which may be problematic for some readers. It is because of this that despite being aimed primarily at adult readers I would have no problems with saying teenagers and young adults could also read this. I can’t think of any issue or content that would make it inappropriate for them. They should probably be careful about the mental health issues but it should be fine. Either way it is a great book and I hope you will consider reading it. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments if you do.