Can I resist a book with this title and a picture of a smoking gun (with a face in the smoke) on the cover? No, I cannot.

Yes, this is a thriller with the main location being a small branch library in Austin, Texas. When two of the library's patrons turn up dead on the same night as a library board game program, four of the library workers are embroiled in the mystery. No, not all of those four workers are actual librarians with a master's in library science, but someone blithely states early on that it's all the same to the public.

Usually when I read a book set in a library among librarians, I quickly notice many strange details. This one wasn't too bad that way except for how much people blithely showed up to work when they weren't scheduled. (Who does that?) They also didn't seem to have any volunteers or Friends of the Library groups. Honey, that's who should deal with piles of book donations, not library staff - and absolutely not on their time off.

But that didn't bother my enjoyment of the book. Maybe they just weren't good at using volunteers. The prologue shows us a man who'd embezzled millions of dollars going through books in this same library, and hints that his widow will turn up there. Then we flash to the present day and meet the four featured library workers.

Sophie is the branch manager. She's Black and the single mother of an accomplished teen and she holds herself apart from her coworkers. Jonathan is a gay man who's big and sturdy and a great help to the other library staff with his solid presence. He grew up in Austin. Blonde Astrid speaks with a Swedish accent. Six months ago, she had a fling with a library patron who then ghosted her, and she's still sore over it. And Hazel is brand-new to the library. She came to live with her grandmother, whose health isn't what it once was, but her grandmother urged her to get a job so she wouldn't be in her hair at all hours.

We quickly learn that all four of these people are keeping secrets. The author consistently uses flashbacks all the way through the book to tell us about those secrets and other relevant developments. When two patrons turn up dead the same night the library hosted a board games program, it turns out that all four featured library staff were embroiled in some way with the victims or with the suspects of the crimes.

And that's where the believability was strained for me. The connections between them mount, and it seems like that would require some big huge coincidences. Yes, some of them being in Austin are directly because of that embezzled money - but not all, and that doesn't cover all of the interconnections.

Also, neither of the dead patrons was killed with a gun, but I assure you that the promise of the cover picture is fulfilled - at least one gun goes off before the end of the book.

So, yes, the book strained believability, but it was still a whole lot of fun. I liked the characters, I enjoyed their love interests, and it was fun reading about the secrets in their pasts. The murder mystery was solved with a thrilling conclusion. Of course, it then took two more hours of the audiobook to wrap up the details - but it was still a fun ride.