Guest post for A Perfect Bind by Dorothy St. James

A Perfect Bind: The Meaning Behind the Title

In the publishing business, some titles are slapped onto the book by the marketing department. And sometimes authors are given the opportunity to pick out the title of a book. I always write my book with a title in mind. Whether or not that title makes it through to when the book is published is anyone’s guess.

When I set out to write the Beloved Bookroom Mystery series, I wanted the books (and their titles) to express my love of books and libraries. Libraries have always been like homes away from home for me. They’re my special places. That’s why writing this series was inevitable.

Part of the fun of writing cozy mysteries are the titles. They’re fun and filled with puns and they often reflect what’s going on in the story. When I sat down to plot out the second book in the Beloved Bookroom Mystery series, the title came to me almost immediately. Let me tell you how rare that is for me! And, let me tell you, this title fit the book perfectly. (Thankfully, my editor agreed.)

First, the title I picked out is book related. A perfect bind is a book binding term that describes how a book is bound together. The pages and cover of the book are held together with an adhesive. And then the three sides are trimmed to create a perfect edge. If you look at a paperback book, you can see how it uses the perfect bind technique.

There was an even more (dare I say it?) perfect reason to use the title A Perfect Bind. The title relates back to the story. A perfect bind in life would mean that someone is in an embarrassing, difficult, or dangerous situation and there really is no clear way out.

In the second book of the Beloved Bookroom Mystery series Trudell Becket has succeeded in building a secret bookroom in the now bookless library where she works. In this secret bookroom book lovers from lovely Cypress, South Carolina, can enjoy browsing bookshelves filled with printed books.

Tru has been working hard to maintain the little library downstairs while performing her “real job” upstairs in the bookless technology center. It’s a delicate balancing act that she’s seemed to have mastered. But then a mysterious vandal breaks into her secret book-filled sanctuary and everything seems to fall apart. The vandal doesn’t steal anything, but brutalizes the books, damaging them and knocking them off shelves

Tru cannot go to the police about this because the bookroom is not supposed to exist. So, she and her friends must solve this mystery on their own. Add to the confusion, a dead body is found behind the library. No one seems to like the man who was murdered. But he has some connections to the library that cannot be overlooked. Plus, on the same night that he was killed the vandals wreak havoc in the secret bookroom again.

Are the murder and the vandalism somehow related? Tru worries that by not telling the police about the library break ins, she’s endangering their chances of finding the murderer. But if she tells them about the break ins, she’ll lose everything she’s worked so hard to protect. This difficult situation is quite a bind.

Tru feels compelled to investigate on her own to make sure her protection of the secret bookroom is not allowing a murderer to go free. Can she and her friends find a way out of this perfect bind they are in? Or will they put themselves into a dangerous situation they cannot handle? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

Dorothy St. James is the author of several cozy mystery series. She lives in the Lowcountry of South Carolina with her sculptor husband. Dorothy is a member of Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and the International Thriller Writers (ITW) and Sister’s in Crime (SinC). This is her second Beloved Bookroom Mystery. 

Learn more about Dorothy St. James and her writing at www.dorothystjames.com. Want more author news? If so, click here to read my Behind the Story interviews from your favorite authors.