Review

For fans of:  Jerrilyn Farmer

The bookbinding business has been a bit slow of late, so Brooklyn Wainwright is thrilled when the traveling TV show This Old Attic hires her to do some work as an on-air rare-book expert. The first item she’s tasked with appraising is a first-edition copy of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. The owner, a florist named Vera, is stunned to learn the book is valued at $25,000 and eagerly accepts Brooklyn’s offer to increase the volume’s worth by doing some minor restoration work.

At first Brooklyn can’t wait to get started on the project; then, though, she’s accosted in the parking lot by a large and angry man claiming to be the book’s legitimate owner, and she starts to wish she’d just left Vera and her treasure well enough alone. Accidents start plaguing the set, Brooklyn gets the sense she’s being followed, and just when she thinks things can’t get any worse, Vera’s found dead in her flower shop.

Is everything that’s happening somehow tied to The Secret Garden, or is there more going on behind the scenes of This Old Attic than meets the eye? Brooklyn must get to the bottom of this mystery and quickly lest she become the next victim. 

The Book Stops Here is the eighth of Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile Mysteries.  I absolutely adored the seventh book in the series, A Cookbook Conspiracy, so I had high hopes regarding The Book Stops Here. What I found between the covers, though, didn’t quite meet my expectations.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s a lot to like in Carlisle’s latest. Brooklyn’s a charming and intelligent heroine, and she has a wonderfully engaging narrative style. As ever, Brooklyn’s dashing yet dangerous boyfriend Derek makes for the perfect love interest and partner in crime(solving). Sweet, smart, sexy, and capable of killing a man with her bare hands, Brooklyn’s new neighbor Alex is essentially the female version of Derek and proves a winsome addition to Carlisle’s cast. And I absolutely adore that Carlisle’s cop, Homicide Detective Inspector Lee, is A) female, and B) a nuanced and fully fleshed character who more often than not functions as an ally rather than an antagonist.

Carlisle’s decision to use an Antiques Roadshow-type program as the backdrop for her mystery is a clever one, as it allows her to introduce all manner of unique objects and interesting people. The pacing is swift; Carlisle places Brooklyn in harm’s way almost immediately and then proceeds to ramp up the tension with every passing scene. The plot is intricate, and Carlisle uses it to work in a really charming origin story for Brooklyn’s bookbinding passion. And I really admire the way Carlisle writes about rare books and their restoration. She manages to convey a ton of information without slowing the pace or detracting from the plot, and her passion and enthusiasm for the topic are contagious. Every time I read a Bibliophile Mystery I come away feeling both entertained and educated, and for this accomplishment Carlisle deserves no small measure of praise.  

That said, while a good 290 pages of The Book Stops Here are marvelous, the last 30 pages or so – basically, the denouements to her two core mysteries – read like the end of a Scooby-Doo episode. The book’s final scenes are so ridiculous and farcical, they’re almost painful to read; it’s heartbreaking to see a book start so right and end so wrong. I know Carlisle’s capable of better, so I won’t write off the series on the basis of what probably amounts to one bad day of writing; hopefully, though, Brooklyn’s next adventure will be a return to form rather than another exercise in disappointment.

Reviewed by Kat