The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society is a charming mashup and homage to the "Cozy Mysteries" trope of which a 'little old lady' (size and age can vary, but certainly for this story 63 years old, and shorter than the sheriff) investigates murders in a picturesque small town/village. Think Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, or Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote.

So much so that for the first hundred pages it was easy to forget the demon part, though our protagonist Sherry Pinkwhistle is a librarian in Winesap, a small town in upstate New York, certain has flashes of dread that things aren’t as they should be, (honestly the numbers of murders for town this size would be a massive spike drawing every true crim podcaster around the country) whenever that feeling comes to the surface, reality glitches and their worries disappear.

The supporting cast is quirky enough to give a scooby gang vibe, Father barry the hot new young priest, Charlotte, a younger woman who clicks with Sherry after she cleared her of the murder of her philandering husband, and Janine, the no-nonsense, fashionable pal she has weekly tea and gossip sessions. Plenty of others in the village all who have hidden depths, cursed backstories and over the top coincidental connections.

Oh and Sherry's cat Sir Thomas Cromwell speaks to warn her of the demon or ancient one 'She' is setting all these narratives up, the latest murder of her boyfriend because if you are an eternal ancient evil you can get bored and clearly watching cosy mysteries being solved passes the time wonderfully. Believable if viewership numbers of these sort of shows supports their appeal across many demographics.

Having read and enjoyed C.M. Waggoner 's other works Unnatural Magic, (Trisha the Troll is a favourite) and The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry (wouldn't call them Ruthless, though there is no Ruth on the team) I can include this novel in that list of enjoyable reads. I think I shall need to read her latest The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale.

Q by Christina Dalcher is a gripping, clear written thriller and like many excellent science fiction extrapolates from a common idea, what if your standing in society could be calculated by a single three digit number 9.99 down to 0.00 I guess but I don't think I read of anyone in the story beneath 4.99 which given the book I can't imagine it ends well for them.

Still it's in the early days of this program where everyone has them but it is on the school children whose almost weekly calculated scores consign them to top, silver or yellow school especially given the focus on the protagonist Elena's two daughters Anne (16) studious, laser focused on getting the top grades and the obviously favoured of her father Malcom an unlikeable arrogant judgemental bigot and one of the architects of this new 'Q' system hence his clear disdain for the younger daughter Freddie (9) who seems bright but suffers from a crippling anxiety (gee I can't think why) which all too clearly reminded me of children who have suffered through some of Australia's ridiculously stressful and proven unnecessary testing regime to provide a university entrance score.

The story is set in a close to contemporary America with mobile phones and tablets. I initially I balked at country wide concern over education given in Australia, the USA and UK they talk about importance of education, critical thinking, being ready for the new technologies and changes but the endless reviews, reforms and changes always seem to translate as do more, with less but it’s the teachers' fault. At least until I realised as always this wasn't about helping everyone 'achieve their potential' it was, like it always is, about funneling resources to those who are judged as 'better' already and maximizing societies investment in them. As it has been throughout western history since the enlightenment.

This is made clear by Elena's near 100 year old grandmother Oma who was a teenage girl in German during the rise of the Nazis. She begins Elena and the readers journey into just how much historically the Nazi societal experiment into 'making people better' was drawn from programs, 'scientific' research and societies in the USA at the time. Here I am not referring to the world lamest cosplay the Klu Klux Clan but the Eugenics movement of the early 20th century.

When Elana manages to manipulate the system to be transferred as a teacher to the yellow state school her daughter was sent she meets two women also transferred one of whom can remember the stories of her black parents who we also subjected to eugenics based on unjustified, never established theories of race, culture, gender or sexuality. All of this on the public record, all the meetings organisations and published journal articles you can look up.

While I found the conclusion satisfying, I fear that if such a program was carried on if news coverage exposed just who far the proponents intended to go (free health clinics for women what would sterilize those who were unlikely to yield sufficiently high Q value offspring) I suspect there would be outrage, denouncements some sackings, ministerial reshuffles and maybe some modification of the program but it would continue.

I hope it wouldn't, I fear it would.