In this day of technology, libraries are still wonderful places. A wealth of knowledge is housed within their walls, free and open to the public. Any book on any subject is available and if the library doesn’t have it on the shelves, a helpful librarian will be glad to order it through inter-library loan. In Moonlight Can Be Murder, Ned visits the library in Ednalee, Oklahoma, and discovers something that may lead to solving mysterious happenings in her home town.
“I was too restless to go home after Grandy’s. I had left the fireplace banked and plenty of food and water for Penny. While my Escape was in the garage, I was driving a compact loaner car. I got in, leaned against the steering wheel and thought of my options. The library would be a good place to spend a few hours and if Greta Anderson were not busy, maybe she would have time to sit down for a chat.
Greta, however, was swamped. It seemed that everyone in Ednalee thought the library was the perfect place to spend a winter afternoon, four days before Christmas.
When I told her I wanted to read through old newspaper items, she smiled and motioned me toward the right section of microfiche. I sauntered back to the files, and dug into the past. Instantly, I forgot about everything except Ednalee forty years before.
Sadly, I read the account of Eldon Decker’s murder, the trial, and the outcome. Going backward, I found the news of the year before Decker’s death and my uncle’s imprisonment.
Reading through the mostly uneventful accounts, I saw an article or two mentioning my parents and their activities in the local PTA, read about a drought that ruined a corn crop, and a winter blizzard which froze cattle in the pastures. Idly, I flicked through these ordinary accounts of a small but thriving Oklahoma town and the comparatively quiet life of forty years earlier.
I was about to call it a day when a familiar name stared up at me.”
What was that familiar name and why was it an important clue? The answer is found within the covers of the first Ned McNeil cozy, and points toward the fact that, at times, Moonlight Can Be Murder.
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