Douglas, Laramee. A Death in Dulcinea (Victoria, Tex.: Alligator Tree Press, c2005) 233 p.

Darby Matheson is the retired school librarian in Dulcinea Texas. “... the last time I wore a size six, I also wore pigtails and played jacks on the sidewalk. I tried to get down to a size ten once, but the diet caused my fingernails to break, and my hair looked like a hairball coughed up by one of my cats; so for health reasons, I keep my weight hovering around one-sixty. On my five-foot frame that makes me just a tad on the non-svelte side.” (p. 7).

Her library experience makes her ideal for solving mysteries.

I'm a librarian for crying out loud. Do you know how many times students have walked into my library and said, 'I need a book'? That's what I get to start with. 'I need a book.' My job for the past twenty-five years has been to discover exactly what that child needed, and I did it by asking questions. (p. 81).

Darby also compares the reference interview with fishing: getting the hook into her student and letting him run with the line for a while, then reeling him in.