LITTLE BLACK BOOK is Kate Carlisle’s 15th Bibliophile Mystery, and it is an intriguing adventure with a group of characters that makes the visit worthwhile.
After visiting Dharma, Brooklyn and Derek return home to San Francisco. The next day a book comes in the mail from Gwyneth Antiquities, Oddlochen, Scotland, but is for Derek, not the book mender Brooklyn. No note, just a first edition of REBECCA. Derek admits to working with Gwyneth when they both served with MI6.
Later, a young woman rings the doorbell and asks Derek if he received a package from Scotland. Introducing herself as Claire Quinn, she informs Brooklyn and Derek she just returned from Scotland where she discovered her Aunt Gwyneth is missing. She hopes the package might provide a clue to her aunt’s disappearance. Brooklyn recognizes Claire as an antique weapons expert she met while working on the TV show, This Old Attic, where they both examined and valued old books and weapons.
Claire explains that when she came home to her apartment, she found someone hiding in her closet and narrowly escaped. Then a pizza delivery man shows up and rings her doorbell. Claire refuses to open the door, and he throws an empty pizza box at a neighbor as he leaves.
Kate Carlisle builds an intricate mystery with lots of threads and twists. The author also creates well-developed characters and realistic relationships. LITTLE BLACK BOOK is a riveting read that unfolds at a suspense-driven pace.
San Francisco book-restoration expert Brooklyn Wainwright is on the case when a rare edition of Rebecca leads to murder in this latest installment in the New York Times bestselling Bibliophile Mystery series.
Brooklyn has been happily settling into married life with her hunky husband, security expert Derek Stone, when a little black book arrives in the mail on a quiet Saturday afternoon. The book is a rare British first edition of Rebecca, and inside, Brooklyn finds a note from her old friend Claire Quinn, asking her to restore it to its former luster. The two women met while working as expert appraisers on the television show This Old Attic. Brooklyn appraised books on the show and Claire's expertise was in antique British weaponry, but they bonded over their shared love of gothic novels.
The day after the book arrives, Claire shows up at Brooklyn and Derek's home--in disguise. She believes her life is in danger, and as soon as Derek sits her down and questions her, Claire reveals that in the last few weeks she has experienced two near-fatal attacks, along with weird notes left in her mailbox, hang-up phone calls, and one very scary car chase. She's afraid that her past is catching up to her. When Claire was only nine years old, she witnesed several men, one of whom was her father, planning a terrible crime. And now it seems that she's been followed, bringing the threats against her literally to Brooklyn's doorstep. Can Brooklyn page through the clues to keep her friend's past from destroying their future?