Lindsey and Sully travel to Chicago for an archivist conference. At the conference, Brooklyn Wainwright makes a cameo appearance. She’s the main character from Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile Mystery series.
After one of the sessions, Lindsey discovers a bag underneath her chair. Inside is a rare book, a first edition of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train. It used to belong to Alfred Hitchcock, evidenced by his notes in the margins. Lindsey and Brooklyn have a moment examining the valuable book.
At the end of the conference, several attendees take the train back east. After an unpleasant scene in the dining car that evening, Lindsey and Sully are glad to go back to their car and relax. Except, they end up watching a thriller, which keeps Lindsey’s mind racing.
She swears she hears something in the next car. The next morning, they discover that the conference director, a man with a shady past, has been murdered. The train stops at Briar Creek, the nearest stop. Lindsey and Sully do their best to help uncover the culprit before it’s too late.
FATAL FIRST EDITION is the fourteenth book in the Library Lover’s series. It was fun to have a cross-over character from another author’s book; I wish we had a little more time with Brooklyn. The setting of the book starts at a conference in Chicago, moves to the train, and finishes in Briar Creek. That way, readers still get to catch up with their favorite characters. The plot moves the book along quickly, making this a quick read. Fatal First Edition is another charming book in this not-to-be-missed series.
People are dying to get their hands on a rare, valuable book in the newest Library Lover’s Mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of The Plot and the Pendulum.
Briar Creek Library director Lindsey Norris and her husband, Sully, are at a popular library conference in Chicago to hear book restoration specialist Brooklyn Wainwright give a keynote address. After the lecture, Lindsey looks under her seat and finds a tote bag containing a first edition of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, inscribed to Alfred Hitchcock. Brooklyn determines the novel is one of a kind and quite valuable, so Lindsey and Sully return the book to the conference director, not wanting to stir up any trouble.
But just hours after the pair boards the train back to Connecticut, rumors that the Highsmith novel has gone missing buzz among the passengers, and they soon find the conference director murdered in his private compartment. And worse—the murderer planted the book in Lindsey and Sully’s room next door, making them prime suspects. Now, they must uncover the murderer and bring them to the end of their line, before they find themselves booked for a crime they didn’t commit.