Sulari Gentill: The Woman in the Library
This odd, endearing and weirdly tricky book is a meta meditation on the traditional detective story. Playing off of Agatha Christie’s The Body in the Library, author Sulari Gentill yanks this classic into the present. In Christie’s Body the corpse of an apparently unknown young woman appears in the library of a private home. In Gentill’s update, four young people are sitting near each other in the Boston Public library. The main character, Freddie (or Winifred), a mystery writer, is working on a new book and she’s observed the others sitting near her, giving them nicknames as she slots them into a possible book. Freud girl, Heroic Chin and Handsome Man have all invaded her imagination, when their real iterations hear a blood-curdling scream.