How can I Help you

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / Thriller / General / Sims, Laura, Fiction / Sims, Laura
On Shelf At: Traverwood Branch, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Thriller / General / Sims, Laura	4-week checkout	In transit
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Thriller / General / Sims, Laura	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Thriller / General / Sims, Laura	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Sims, Laura	4-week checkout	Due 05-11-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Thriller / General / Sims, Laura	4-week checkout	Due 05-09-2024

"No one knows Margo's real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges. That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo's subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a patron's death in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo's mysterious past, Patricia can't resist digging deeper--even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming."-- Provided by publisher.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

An Entertaining Quick Read for Bibliophiles submitted by cdunlop on October 16, 2023, 8:29pm One doesn't typically think of a small-town public library as being a venue for murder and mayhem, but Laura Sims' novel is not typical. Margo Finch takes a job as a library clerk, and sometime afterward, a young woman, Patricia Delmarco, is hired as a research librarian. They eye each other across the room, and develop a mutual fascination at a distance. Before long, one of the troublesome library patrons has an emergency in the ladies' room, and Margo goes to her rescue. By the time Patricia arrives, Margo is lying on the patron's dead body. "I missed it", Margo says.

Given that peculiar situation, Patricia begins to wonder who Margo really is. During a coffee conversation, Margo mentions that she is a former nurse who walked off the job in the middle of a shift. Given that revelation, Patricia does some Googling, and soon comes to believe that Margo is really Jane Rivers, a nurse who was suspected of killing some of her patients, and suddenly disappeared into thin air from her hospital employment.

Patricia, a would-be novelist with one failed effort to her credit, begins to use her fantasized version of Margo/Jane as fodder for a new manuscript. She spends her days furiously scribbling in a notebook, all the while observed by Margo, who wonders what she is writing about. Eventually another death occurs, this time near their shared apartment complex. Since the deceased is again a library patron, Patricia's suspicions are heightened, although she refrains from mentioning them to the detective who is investigating the case.

Margo would dearly love to examine the contents of Patricia's notebook, and one day she has the opportunity to do so. This sets of a chain of events that propel the story to an appropriate, albeit implausible, conclusion.

Narrated alternately by Margo and Patricia, _How Can I Help You_ is a brisk read, but not stylistically imposing, although it does adroitly capture the sense of a public library's atmosphere, complete with idiosyncratic patrons. It's just right for the beach or an airplane.