Witch Way to Murder--Shirley Damsgaard

I admit it, I took this out of the library because based on the plot summary I was 95% sure it would annoy the piss out of me. I don't know why I do this sort of thing, picking up books with high probability of cuteness, reading the blogs of people I think are annoying and ridiculous, getting involved in conversations that I know will just end up with my stifling an urge to go off. I enjoy torture, I know. However, way to go Shirley Damsgaard! She's constructed an engaging little mystery here.

Ophelia is a librarian in small town Iowa. Her grandmother Abby is an Appalachian transplant who has got "the gift"--second sight, intuition, herb lore, the whole package. This runs in Abby's family and has landed on Ophelia, who will have no truck with it. Things are okay until a charming stranger who claims to be a salesman comes to town, a rash of fertilizer thefts start, and a body turns up in Abby's backyard and Ophelia's suppressed gift starts making itself known as they investigate what's up (besides the meth problem) in their small town.

Here's what I thought would annoy me:

1) The librarian thing. I've got a rant stored up, but man--hardly anyone writes a depiction of a librarian that doesn't cling to the emotionally frigid, afraid of the world, over-the-hill bitch stereotype. Ophelia is like that, but there's a reason for it other than her job: she's got an aspect of her personality, the witchy side, that she doesn't understand or trust so she try to hide it and overcompensates by being super practical and logical. She's also lost someone she cares about to violent crime and she's not dealt well with it, and knows it. But she gets up every day and works at her small town library (also well-depicted) and tries to live her life as best she can.

2)The witch thing. Okay, I roll my eyes at the paranormal a lot. Too much exposure to pagan rollplayers. But by having Abby be an older woman who comes by her ways out of tradition works. it also rings true that while Abby is quiet about what she does because her community wouldn't understand, she is true to herself and her traditions.