Book Review: Homicide in Hardcover by Kate Carlisle (Bibliophile Mysteries #1)

Stars: 4 out of 5
Pros: Real, engaging characters

Cons: Underdeveloped plot

The Bottom Line:

Real characters

The plot had some weaknesses

Still, a good debut

"Remember the Devil"

A Bibliophile Mystery.  Just based on the series title alone, I was determined to read Homicide in Hardcover, the first in a new series.  The star is Brooklyn Wainwright, a woman who restores old books for a living.  I loved the characters, but found the plot engaging but uneven.

Brooklyn Wainwright is attending a gala party celebrating the opening of a new exhibit at the Covington Library.  The books have been lovingly restored by Abraham Karastovsky, Brooklyn's old mentor.  They had a recent falling out, but Brooklyn is happy that their meeting brings an obvious reunion of their friendship.

That reunion is short lived when Brooklyn wanders to the work rooms in the basement and finds Abraham dying.  He manages to whisper "Remember the Devil."  Brooklyn is determined to make sure her mentor's killer is brought to justice, but what does that one clue mean?  Does it have anything to do with the supposedly cursed copy of Goethe's Faust he was restoring for the exhibit?

Cursed books and a murder at a library?  What book lover could resist?

And I found the characters absolutely charming.  Well, the heroes anyway.  The ones we spent any amount of time around were very real.  In fact, I was surprised how quickly I came to care for them.  I was upset by Abraham's death myself, and I knew going in he was the victim.  That's how real and powerful the characters are.  Brooklyn has a touch of humor to her.  It's not enough for me to think of this as a humorous books, but it does lighten things up at times.

My only real problem with the book was the plot.  And it's rather hard to explain.  It's not that nothing was happening.  There are lots of great scenes of action that made the book hard to put down.  It's that the action felt more like filler.  There were very few clues or red herrings.  So for all the great, well written scenes, I didn't feel like we were learning anything new that might help us figure out who the killer was.

Of course, my biggest rule for a mystery is that the main character must find a clue to solve it.  I guessed the killers identity early on, but Brooklyn was able to find a clue that led her to the right solution.  And the climax was quite nerve racking.  That did much to redeem the book in my eyes.

The book was very well written.  I was able to get lost in the story very quickly, especially connecting with the characters.  It was polished and flowed well.

While Homicide in Hardcover didn't blow me away, there was definitely some promise here.  With as much as I love the characters, I will definitely be reading the sequel to see how things progress.