Libraries are generally placid places, and that's what makes Laura Sims's decision in the chilling How Can I Help You so ingenious--to create one that's home to a murderous character. Sims (Looker), a poet and critic, brings one more useful credential to this frightening story: she's a part-time reference librarian at a public library near her New Jersey home.
Margo Finch toils away as a circulation clerk at the Carlyle Public Library but, far from possessing any relevant experience, she's a refugee under a different name from a nursing career, who's left a series of hospital jobs with a string of unexplained patient deaths. As if that weren't worrisome enough, at least one more shocking event in Margo's past adds to her menace.
Her life in a world of books that's "quiet, anonymous, orderly, and sane" begins to unravel when Patricia Delmarco, a new reference librarian, arrives from Chicago. Patricia has her own set of troubles she's trying to escape, among them a failed novel she's abandoned after seven years (what she bitterly calls "the Great Rejection"), and a moribund relationship with her accountant boyfriend. Patricia is content to put her aspirations for a writing career behind her as she settles into her job, at least until a cantankerous library patron dies under mysterious circumstances with Margo nearby. After Margo carelessly discloses information about her prior life, Patricia's research skills kick in. Patricia unleashes a flow of words about her co-worker's vividly imagined past into the notebook that is her constant companion--all while she sits at her desk responding to an array of bizarre reference questions from library patrons.
From that point forward, in chapters that alternate between the voices of Margo and Patricia, Sims fashions an intriguing cat-and-mouse game in which it's hard at times to distinguish between pursuer and pursued. When another patron meets an untimely death, all of the pieces are in place for a suitably cataclysmic climax, one that Sims executes with the same assurance she displays in the rest of the story.
Without interrupting her plot's momentum, Sims raises intriguing questions about the wellspring of literary creativity--and even more provocative ones about writerly ethics. Fans of Shirley Jackson's eerie fiction will enjoy the roleWe Have Always Lived in the Castle, her gothic horror novel, plays in the story. How Can I Help You is smartly scary entertainment that will have readers guessing about its outcome until almost the final page. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: In this canny and chilling thriller, two librarians face off in a deadly battle of wits that only one can win.