Footnotes For The Recently Departed

Before you read

1. The story begins on an ordinary morning of sorting donated books before news of a death reaches the shop. What do you enjoy about a mystery that starts quietly, with routine and small habits, and what do you hope the quiet is hiding?
2. Cecily can sense something of a book's past owners by holding it with bare hands. If you could learn one thing about the previous owner of any secondhand book, what would you want to know, and what would you rather never find out?
3. The setting is a small harbour town in autumn fog, where everyone seems to know everyone's business. What does a coastal town give a cozy mystery that an inland village might not?
4. Many readers love a sleuth who is not a police officer, working alongside a detective who is. What makes that partnership satisfying to you, and where do you think the friction should come from?

Discussion questions

Spoilers ahead. Finish the book first.

1. The book opens and closes with Cecily unlocking The Margin Note, noticing the harbour smell, and sorting a box of donations that ends with a paperback and a quiet vision of someone happy with a book. The last chapter ends with her knowing better "than to trust the ordinary." What has changed in Cecily between the first morning and the last, and what has stayed the same?
2. Cecily knows early that Pete Morrow was at sea, but "It counted for nothing yet," because she cannot prove it. How did the book handle a sleuth whose most certain knowledge cannot be shared? Did it feel fair to you as a reader, and did you trust her hands as much as she did?
3. Cecily hides the Prynn history behind the false row on the Local Interest shelf instead of handing it over, later calling it "a decision I would make differently now." When Hale says "Tell me what you know," what did you want Cecily to do, and did the break-in make her choice easier or harder to forgive?
4. In chapter two Cecily watches the town settle on the slip on the harbour wall, "the shape of a conclusion someone had already reached." By the end we learn the town was wrong about where Desmond Farr died. What does the book say about how a community builds a story, and who does the story protect?
5. Rowena Chalke is loud, furious and public, and Pete Morrow said openly that Desmond would cost his family the moorings. Cecily later admits, "She had wanted Rowena to have done it." Which suspect did you want it to be, and why do the obvious answers feel so satisfying?
6. Judith Farr is warm, hospitable and clearly grieving, and Cecily feels that grief through her bare hands at the café. By the café conversation, we hear about the land paperwork and the years behind it. How did you feel about Judith by the end, and what did you make of her line, "I needed someone else to have seen it"?
7. Cecily walks to the café alone, with a letter on its way to the station and a timing she has planned, and then realizes how alone she is. Was this courage, recklessness or something else, and what did Hale's arrival in the fog change about how you read the scene?
8. Ptolemy is described as having the calm authority of "a building inspector." He settles against the false row, he watches Hale, and he sends the navy button skittering across the floor. How literally did you take him as part of the paranormal side of the story, and what do you think he knows?
9. Audrey calls a pressed flower and a list behind a wardrobe "a little footnote," like finding a margin note in a book you thought you had read. How does the title idea of footnotes and marginalia run through the book, from Desmond's pencil notes to Cecily's green notebooks, and what does it say about the secrets people keep in the edges of their lives?
10. In the last chapters Hale says, "I'll be back. About the case," Cecily keeps the button because some footnotes "deserved to be kept," and the pages after the story preview Dead Reckoning. What questions did the ending leave you with about Cecily, Hale and Ptolemy, and what do you want from book two?

Pairing menu

Drink

A mug of tea, and if you can manage it, the better one, the way Audrey brings it through the connecting passage from Salt & Thread.

Bite

A warm scone, the surplus kind Audrey appears with when she has noticed something in Cecily's face and decided not to mention it.

Setting

The wingback chair by a front window, two amber lamps on, a stack of secondhand books at your elbow and fog pressing against the glass as if the harbour were just outside.