The Librarian as a Superwoman!

OK, this will sound really out there to you librarians who read my blog but I'm so tired of our collection development folks disregarding self published authors out of hand without at least giving them the benefit of an evaluation. Don and I had a lengthy wait at the San Jose airport last week when we were returning from our vacation in Costa Rica. On a lark he bought and downloaded a book for me, "The Librarian," by a man named Philip Wilson. http://www.philipmwilson.com/ Don couldn't help himself, the cover is fantastic and the reviews were stellar even if they weren't posited by the usual editorial suspects.

During the two and a half hour flight, I never looked up once! Admittedly, this is not my usual fare, but it was so well written and so high octane that I forgave the unlikely premise that our unprepossessing heroine librarian, named Sarah by the way, could actually morph into a vengeful killing machine. I normally eschew too much violence in my reading but, well, Sarah's victims were certainly deserving of her wrath.

A chance encounter on a New York City subway brings former navy seal Paul Taylor into the orbit of Sarah Andrews, a public librarian and tech guru. But after only a few dates that bode well for the relationship Sarah disappears. Sarah has never had much of a private life. Between work and caring for her aging father, her days have been fairly circumscribed. When the nursing home calls to tell her that her dad has had a stroke and been taken to a downtown hospital she decides to save cab money and walk there from the library. Mistake!

Lost in a seedy warehouse district only ten blocks from the hospital, Sarah stops under a street light to double check her directions and finds herself smack dab in the middle of a drug bust featuring a pack of crooked cops hell bent on skimming a million bucks off the take. No witnesses allowed. When the money disappears off the front seat of an unmarked car under that same street lamp the dirty cops come to one bizarre conclusion. Sarah is arrested and brutally tortured with the permission of the future chief of police, the man in charge of the drug crimes unit. Oh irony!

Convinced that a plea deal is the way to go by a lawyer in cahoots with the police department, Sarah is sentenced to three months in prison, a horrific maximum security facility where she learns to use her brains if not brawn to stay alive. And where you might ask is the wonderful new lover Paul Taylor? Why doesn't he answer her letters?

It's said that the will to live is an insurmountable desire and that we humans will do almost anything to survive. In this shockingly tense novel author Philip Wilson has created a character who represents this survival instinct with a vengeance. There are no literary pretensions in this book. There are no redeeming qualities in the bad guys and even the good guys, though we root for them with vigor, are morally shaky. What "The Librarian" is? A flat out unputdownable book just perfect for a long flight, car drive, or doctor's office waiting room. I couldn't find it in my library and you may not find it in yours but it's worth the Amazon download fee and will support an amazing self-published author.