Hemlock

Hemlock's action takes place far away from its usual Pecan Springs, Texas location. For most authors this results in a poorly written novel. In fact, Susan Wittig Albert did this once before and the book was awful. In Hemlock, though, she has masterfully written a story that is engaging from the first page until the last.

Our main character China Bayles receives a phone call from a friend in North Carolina. She is asked by Dorothea Harper, director of the Hemlock House Foundation, to visit her to help her with locating a missing, rare book titled A Curious Herbal. The book was written by Elizabeth Blackwell in the fifteenth century and contains her drawings of 500 herbs and plants that apothecaries used to treat people. The book vanished from its locked display case in Hemlock House, an old mansion in the North Carolina mountains. 

Another prominent character is Jenna Peterson, a graduate student who is interning at Hemlock House and is assisting Dorothea with cataloging the thousands of books in the library. Both Jenna and Dorothea live in the mansion. The police believe that one of them stole the book, mainly because they are the only people with access to the library. It's value is in the hundreds of thousands and would make either one of them wealthy. Additional characters include Police Chief Curtis, bookseller Jed Conway,  and Elizabeth Blackwell herself.  Elizabeth's story is told via drafts of a historical novel that Jenna is writing and sends to China for input. Elizabeth's story is a big part of Hemlock and is the most interesting part of the novel. There are several minor characters who are not mentioned often but are integral to solving the mystery.  These include relatives, the housekeeper and members of the Hemlock House board of directors.

Hemlock is not a cozy murder mystery but rather a cozy art theft mystery. All of the prior books in the series involved the solving of a murder. This installment of the series is fantastic. There is even a little suspense. When China walks up the rickety stairs of the mansion it is implied that she is avoiding danger of some sort not related to the steps.  This is a red herring. There are quite a few of these types of hints in the book and you don't know what will be important until the end of the story.

Hemlock is one of the author's best novels. 5 out of 5 stars.