When Librarians Gather

A guest post by Miranda James.


Librarians, like other professional groups, have professional associations – associations that serve general or specialized needs. The catch-all in the United States is the American Library Association, and its annual meeting, held in the summer, attracts the largest number of librarians, exhibitors, and library supporters. 

Then there are the specialized associations, like the Medical Library Association, the Public Library Association, the Special Library Association, the American Association of Law Libraries, and so on. Beyond these there are regional association meetings of various kinds. These days travel funds are restricted, so attendance is down across the board, but librarians still manage to meet.

When I was thinking about the plot of Twelve Angry Librarians, I wanted it to involve some kind of library association meeting. Since Charlie works at an academic library, I thought a regional academic library meeting was exactly what was needed. Thus the Southern Academic Library Association (SALA) was born.

Librarians attend these conferences for numerous reasons – networking with other librarians, sharing information on technology, trends, and workplace issues, giving presentations on various topics, and reconnecting with friends and former colleagues. There are always keynote speeches, given by notable, occasionally controversial, speakers. These are the elements that helped create the story in this book.

At the SALA meeting, hosted by the Athena College Library, Charlie has the chance to visit with two old friends from his library school days. He is also forced to deal with his nemesis from that same time in his life, the odious Gavin Fong. Charlie and Gavin have an unfriendly history between them, and hostilities reopen in the present. When Gavin, one of the keynote speakers, drops dead during his talk, Charlie could be on top of the suspect list. He fought in public with Gavin at the conference…

That was the genesis of the plot of Twelve Angry Librarians.

Miranda James is the pseudonym of Dean James, a seventh-generation Mississippian long transplanted to Texas. A mystery fan since the age of ten, he wrote his first novel at the ripe old age of twelve. The only copy of The Mystery of the Willow Key vanished years ago, but since it was highly derivative of the Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mystery series, that’s probably a good thing. 

 Dean lives with two young cats, thousands of books, and thinks frequently about killing people – but only in the pages of fiction.

Cozy Monday

Twelve Angry Librarians (Cat in the Stacks #8) by Miranda James (Berkley Prime Crime hardcover, 21 February 2017).

Charlie Harris enjoys being the interim library director at Athena College, but he's happy to only be "interim".  Having to deliver the welcome address to the Southern Academic Libraries Association annual conference, being held at Athena is very stressful, though, as Charlie does not enjoy public speaking.

To add to that stress, Charlie's nemesis from library school, Gavin Fong, is the keynote speaker.  To be fair, Gavin has always rubbed most people the wrong way, being an insufferable and conceited and certain he knows everything.

And he seems to still take pleasure in baiting Charlie, who eventually reaches the end of his patience and takes a swing at Gavin.  When Gavin is found dead the next day, Charlie is at the top of the suspect list.

Of course, we all know he's innocent, as does Chief Deputy Kanesha Berry.  But CD Berry has to find concrete evidence of Charlie's innocence.  Though there's no shortage of people who wished Fong harm, finding the real culprit is a difficult task.

This is an extremely well-constructed mystery.  Clues and red herrings are perfectly placed, and the identity of the killer should be a real surprise.

Charlie and his Maine Coon cat Diesel, as well as their family and friends, are a charming group, and spending time with them is a delight!

The publisher has generously offered a copy of Twelve Angry Librarians to one of my readers.  Please comment below before 12:01 a.m. on Monday, February 20th.  Entries from the US only, please.  
Please don't forget to include an email address where I can contact you if you win!

FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher for providing me with a review copy of this book.

Belles of Steel

By guest blogger Miranda James.



Every small Southern town has them – those indomitable women who run all kinds of organizations, from garden and bridge clubs to charitable agencies. Often they come from the town’s oldest families, generation after generation of club women who oil the wheels of the social engine. These were exactly the women I needed when I was working on Out of Circulation, the fourth book in my “Cat in the Stacks” series.

The story revolved around fund-raising efforts for the local public library – in this case, the fictional Athena (Mississippi) Public Library. I needed strong characters for the Friends of the Library Board of Directors, and I counted on disagreements among the members. Has there ever been a committee when members didn’t butt heads over even the most minute of details? Perfect starting point for conflict in a murder mystery, I thought.

In the spring of 2011 I attended the first-ever Daddy’s Girls Weekend, an event put together by my friend and fellow writer, Carolyn Haines, author of the Sarah Booth Delaney series. There I met two sisters, An’gel Ducote Molpus and Dickce Ducote Little, who inspired me to create their fictional counterparts, Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce Ducote.

The fictional sisters are several decades older, unmarried, and childless, yet their characters owe much to their real-life inspirations. The Ducote sisters are the true grandes dames of Athena society, intelligent, hard-working, and intolerant of pretention and snobbery. The conflict between them and the character of Vera Cassity was an essential element of the story, and I had great fun with the scenes involving these characters.


Not long after I finished Out of Circulation I was working on ideas for a second series, one that would feature two older women characters. After discussion with my agent and my editor, we settled on making the Ducote sisters the main characters. I loved them, my editor loved them, and evidently so did my readers. Thus was the new series born.

The first book in the “Southern Ladies” mysteries, Bless Her Dead Little Heart, is officially out on October 7th. The Ducote sisters are on their own as amateur detectives, because Charlie Harris and his family are in France on vacation. They do have the assistance of Diesel, the Maine Coon cat, who makes a cameo appearance in the book. An old sorority sister, Rosabelle Sultan, turns up on the sisters’ doorstep one August afternoon and claims that someone in her family is trying to murder her. Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce know that Rosabelle loves being the center of attention, but this sounds a bit over-the-top even for this self-absorbed socialite. When Rosabelle’s family members follow her to Athena, however, the sisters quickly discover that one of them does have murder in mind.

I had great fun writing this book, letting the sisters have their way. I hope readers will have fun, too, getting to know Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce.

Berkley Prime Crime has generously offered a copy of Bless Her Dead Little Heart to one of my readers. Please comment below before midnight on October 29, 2014. Entries from the US only, please.  
Please don't forget to include an email address so I can contact you if you win.

Welcome Guest Blogger Miranda James!

I blame Nancy Drew for my life of crime. Reading it and writing it, that is.

I was ten when I borrowed The Secret of Shadow Ranch from a cousin. It was the first mystery I ever read, and I was hooked. Then, to my delight, I discovered this was only one of a long series of adventures in which Nancy solved mystery after mystery. Just as exciting, I soon found other amateur mystery-solvers: the Hardy Boys, the Dana Girls, Judy Bolton, Trixie Belden, and many more. By the time I began reading adult mysteries, my love of the amateur detective was completely entrenched.

When I decided I wanted to write a mystery myself, I knew my main character would be an amateur. After all, I’m not a policeman, or a lawyer, or a private detective. But I do have a healthy dose of curiosity about the world around me and the people in it. Charlie Harris, the sleuth in my “Cat in the Stacks” series, is just like me in that respect. He’s also about my age (fiftyish, if you must know), he’s a librarian, he grew up in Mississippi, and he has a Maine coon cat. That’s as far as it goes, however. (I have two cats, by the way, neither of which is a Maine coon. Also, Diesel is much better behaved than my two.)

I wanted to incorporate my knowledge of, and love for, these juvenile series books into one of my own books, and in the new book, The Silence of the Library, I have done so. I created a series character in the mold of Nancy Drew and the other girl detectives and called her Veronica Thane. The author of the series, Electra Barnes Cartwright, was inspired by Mildred Wirt Benson (the first writer, aka “Carolyn Keene”, of the Nancy Drew series, Margaret Sutton, author of the Judy Bolton series, and Julie Campbell Tatham, the original author of Trixie Belden. In fact the book is dedicated to their memories.

The most fun part of writing this book for me was the “excerpts” from the first Veronica Thane book. I reread some of my favorite girl detective stories from the 1930s to get a sense of the style in my head, and off I went. I hope readers will get a kick out of this aspect of the story. Of course, The Silence of the Library includes murder – a subject that usually didn’t come up in the classic juvenile series books. But when you get a number of rabid book collectors together, with hints of a rare and highly collectible volume, something deadly is sure to happen.

Miranda James is the pseudonym of Dean James, a seventh-generation Mississippian long transplanted to Texas. A mystery fan since the age of ten, he wrote his first novel at the ripe old age of twelve. The only copy of The Mystery of the Willow Key vanished years ago, but since it was highly derivative of the Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mystery series, that’s probably a good thing.

 Dean lives with two young cats, thousands of books, and thinks frequently about killing people – but only in the pages of fiction.