Ophelia Jenson, smalltown librarian, is doing her best to settle into her new life as a surrogate mom to Tink (Tatiana) the 11-year-old girl she and her grandmother rescued.

Unfortunately, just a mile from her home, The Vipers Nest has opened. The bar caters to motorcycle riders -- and not the rich urban biker types. Everywhere she looks, she's seeing leather-clad bikers and she, like the local newspaper editor, suspects trouble.

Trouble comes in the form of Becca, cousin to Ophelia's employee and friend, Darci and a failed California actress wannabe. On her first night in town, Becca takes up with Adder, one of the cyclists, and ends up drugged and sleeping with his corpse. Everyone but Ophelia and Darci believes Becca committed the murder. The situation gets dangerous, because there are people with a vested interest in keeping things quiet.

Overall, the Ophelia & Abby series are great tea cosies. The characters are interesting and engaging and have become very real throughout the books. The small town seems like a lot of the little places you could go through, too. This particular novel is the fastest paced of the series so far. Some of the fans who like cosies may object to kicking up the danger a bit, but I found the book to be enjoyable and a good can't-put-down read.

One serious character gaffe in this novel is Ophelia musing -- after a break-in destroys some of her photos -- that a printed picture that was ruined had been on the memory stick of her digital camera and now was lost to her forever. Hello! That photo had to be processed through a PC, where she should have kept a backup. I'm a librarian, and most librarians I know are quite careful to make sure they have backups of photos and other important documents.