Dewey Decimated is the sixth in the series of the Haunted Library series and it’s another trip to the small town library with the big town budget. Clover Ridge Library has acquisitioned the building next door and hired a contractor to refurbish the building for the library’s needs. Carrie Singleton has her heart set on a room with stadium seating for 320 people for her events.

The builders are off to a bad start when they find a corpse in the basement. This does not stall the work much as the police come to collect the corpse soon enough. Next thing, the builders (I really should use air quotes with that) break through an adjoining wall, unscheduled and in the wrong place.

The builders put up some tarp and clear up the rubble and continue their work. What? No! The construction work should be shut down until a proper investigation into the incident is done: how did this happen? Is it likely to happen again? And was the structural integrity of the building damaged? (i.e. is it still safe for patrons to use the library?) Breaking through a wall unscheduled is not a “oopsy” event and should not be misnomered a “mishap”.

This is not my only eye-rolling moment at how local government in Clover Ridge works. I’m not sure how Carrie got on the local counsel (it seems she was asked rather than elected, but I guess that’s properly explained in a previous book), but it seems the counsel holds meetings all over the place and never ever is there someone present to take minutes. Then how are the citizens of Clover Ridge to check that their local counsel is working in the best interest of the town?

Such technicalities do detract from the main mystery.

Because there is a main mystery. It turns out the corpse is the body of Carrie’s fiancé Dylan’s uncle. An uncle he hasn’t seen in at least eight or ten years. An uncle who’s ghost is now also hanging out at the library. While Carrie is determined to let the police handle it, another ghost at the library, a reporter that’s harassing her and finally the murder of fellow counsel member and contractor for the library, pull Carrie in to find out the truth.

I never really got into this story. The technicalities bothered me. I didn’t really care about either dead man and who had killed them. I didn’t care much about Carrie either.

And can Carrie please put up a visitor’s chair in her office so people can have a seat without her assistant vacating the room?

I read an ARC through NetGalley.