Checked Out (A Dead-End Job Mystery #14) by Elaine Viets

I so loved the husband wife team in the Dead-End Job series when I read Catnapped that as soon as I saw Checked Out (A Dead-End Job Mystery #14) by Elaine Viets, I moved it straight to the top of my reading stack.

From the back of the book:

Shhh...in the newest hardcover in the national bestselling Dead-End Job Mystery series, Helen Hawthorne quietly goes undercover at a local library to search for a missing masterpiece.

Wealthy socialite Elizabeth Cateman Kingsley has hired Helen to find a missing John Singer Sargent painting, owned by her late father. After his death, many of Davis Cateman’s books were donated to the Flora Park library, and his daughter suspects the small watercolor—worth millions—was tucked away inside one of those dusty tomes.

To search the stacks, Helen applies for a position as a library volunteer and discovers the library director has a catalog of complaints—from a mischievous calico cat named Paris to the mysterious disappearance of various items that some of the more imaginative staff are attributing to a ghost haunting the building.

While her husband Phil sticks his neck out to find a missing necklace, Helen is on her own with no one to lend her a hand. When a dead body turns up in a parking lot, it appears someone is willing to go to any lengths to keep the treasure in the library quiet. Now Helen is bound and determined to find the killer as well as the painting—before she’s taken out of circulation herself.

My thoughts:

Being a voracious reader, I spend a lot of time at the library. I even head down there for after hours stuffs, so that makes the setting of this part one of my favorite cozy settings. Phil and Helen are such an awesome couple; I love reading them. There is a quirk to the characters that I adore.

The mystery had a fast pace that kept me flipping pages and, with the amount of suspects to pick from, I had a blast puzzling out this one, even though if I am being honest, I didn't figure it out. As with the other part I have read in this series, there was a great humor to the style that kept this lighthearted and fun to read.

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Disclosure: I may receive products in exchange for an honest review. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I personally believe will be good for my readers.