Mary Anna Evans
Mary Anna Evans has been intriguing readers with her masterful and intelligent mysteries for over two decades. During this time, Mississippi-born Evans earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Exeter and became an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma. Given her background, it is no surprise that her latest novel, The Dark Library (Poisoned Pen Press 2025), continues her tradition of well-crafted, character-driven, and compellingly layered mysteries.
The Dark Library is a marvelous book, rich with remarkable characters and suspense, skillfully exploring the explosive collision of dark family secrets and deadly shames buried in a college’s history. The novel returns to the World War II era, as seen in Evans’ recent books, The Physicist’s Daughter and The Traitor Beside Her. As in these prior works, the protagonist is a highly intelligent woman navigating what was then historically a male-dominated profession—this time, academia in 1942.
The opening line sets the tone and immediately immerses readers in the complex plot: “I suppose there are more soul-destroying places to die than at the foot of an ivory tower, but I can’t think of any.” The character reflecting on this is Dr. Estella Emily Eckerd, Ph.D., who prefers to be called E. The dead man is Dean Jameson, the dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentham College in the small town of Bentham-on-Hudson. He is also E’s boss, and she was apparently the last person to speak with him before he fell from the tower to his death.
The dean’s bewildering death might be the first mystery, but it won’t be the last. His demise is intricately woven into a growing collection of unanswered questions. E’s father, a feared college professor, recently died, and her mother is missing and presumed to have jumped off a cliff into the bay below. When officials drag the water searching for her body, they instead dredge up the remains of Helena Frederick, a pretty college student who disappeared fifteen years earlier. The connections between the dead dean, the long-missing student, and E’s own parents remain confoundingly perplexing. To further complicate matters, E discovers she is being spied upon.
Personally consumed with the search for her mother, E is haunted by her parents’ tumultuous relationship. Her mother, a beautiful poet and an enigma, vanished the same day her father was stricken with what would soon kill him. Annie, the family’s faithful housekeeper and a close friend to E and her mother, reveals harrowing details of that day, though they provide no solid answers.
Summoned home from her teaching position in Boston, E struggles with professional discrimination. A Yale Ph.D. holder, she seeks the respect and title that a man with her credentials would receive. However, Dean Jameson refuses to offer her an equivalent title, office, or salary, relegating her to research. When the war depletes the college’s faculty of male professors, she takes on their teaching responsibilities but remains underpaid and unrecognized. Though she longs to find a better position, her search for her mother keeps her in Bentham-on-Hudson. Her father’s menacing memory looms over both E and Annie as they continue their search.
Two men seek E’s affections: one, the family lawyer who offers financial security, and the other, a young professor who holds the teaching position she should have. Each harbors his own mysteries, and neither entirely adds up. Nevertheless, E is drawn to the professor.
As the title suggests, The Dark Library has strong gothic elements. Hawke Hall, from which Dean Jameson fell, is described as an “ugly heap of stone and bricks with round towers,” resembling “a castle designed by an architect who had only seen castles in books.” Rockfall House, E’s childhood home to which she has returned, is an “aged, turreted Victorian home” perched halfway up a cliff. The house holds closely guarded secrets, including hidden passages, a vast library of valuable books containing clues, and disguised rooms. While there is no literal ghost, the long-missing Helena effectively serves as one, haunting the characters through the mystery of her death.
The Dark Library pays homage to Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier in skilled and effective ways. The story approaches Christie’s locked-room mystery concept but teasingly stops short of fully embracing it. Readers should also watch for a passage that honors a classic scene from du Maurier’s Rebecca. Given that Evans is a Christie scholar and co-edited The Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie, this homage is well-executed and adds intensity to the novel.
All in all, The Dark Library is a compelling, complex mystery that showcases Evans’ considerable talents. The novel exudes a brooding sense of doom, unsettling at times with its multiple deaths and missing mother. Ultimately, the many buried secrets will erupt in the aging mansion on the cliffside.
The multi-award-winning Mary Anna Evans is the acclaimed author of the Faye Longchamp archaeological mysteries, a college professor, and a frequent guest lecturer.
Leave a Reply