The Paper Caper

February 1, 2022

In The Paper Caper, Carlisle's latest "Bibliophile Mystery," murder transpires at the first annual Mark Twain Festival, held by Brooklyn Wainwright at her bookstore and underwritten by media magnate Joseph Cabot. In Castillo's The Hidden One, Amish elders turn to Painters Mill chief of police Kate Burkholder when the remains of a long-vanished bishop are discovered, bearing evidence of foul play (150,000-copy first printing). Private informer Flavia Albia's next Desperate Undertaking is finding a serial killer (or killers) committing brutal murder and staging the corpses around Davis's first-century CE Rome (30,000-copy first printing). In Hokuloa Road, cross genre-writing, Shirley Jackson Award-winning Hand makes Grady Kendall caretaker of a luxury property in Hawaii (as far as possible from his native Maine), then has him hunting for a young woman from his flight who has since vanished (30,000-copy first printing). In McCall Smith's The Sweet Remnants of Summer, Isabel Dalhousie is serving on an advisory committee for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery when she is caught up in the squabbles of a prominent family where Nationalist vs. Socialist ideologies prevail. In Peril at the Exposition, a follow-up to March's Edgar finalist debut, Murder in Old Bombay, newlyweds Capt. Jim Agnihotri and Diana Framji have left British-ruled Bombay (now Mumbai) for 1890s Boston when Jim is sent to investigate a murder in Chicago (50,000-copy first printing). In Munier's The Wedding Plot, Mercy's grandmother Patience is set to marry her longtime beloved at the five-star Lady's Slipper Inn when family enmities bubble to the surface, the inn's spa director vanishes, and a stranger turns up dead (30,000-copy first printing). In An Honest Living--a debut from Murphy, editor in chief of CrimeReads, Literary Hub's crime fiction vertical--an attorney picking up odd jobs after walking out on his stranglehold law firm agrees to help reclusive literati Anna Reddick find her possibly thieving bookseller husband, and all's well until the real Anna Reddick walks in. In Rosenfelt's Holy Chow, an older woman who adopts sweet senior chow mix Tessie from Andy Carpenter's Tara Foundation makes Andy promise that if she dies he will take care of Tessie provided that her son cannot--which he certainly can't when he is arrested days later on suspicion of his mother's murder (60,000-copy first printing).

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May 15, 2022
Murder dogs a festival devoted to all things Mark Twain. Bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright and her dangerously sexy husband, security specialist Derek Stone, are both doing work for wealthy newspaper owner and bibliophile Joseph Cabot. Brooklyn's running a bookbinding workshop at the magnificent Covington Library, where she plans to refurbish The Prince and the Pauper as part of the festival. She's intimidated by Joseph's second wife, Ella, and Ella's supercilious mother, Ingrid, a pair of humorless Swedish beauties. At a party at the library, Joseph introduces some of the festival activities, including a contest offering a $100,000 prize to whomever looks the most like--not Mark Twain--Joseph himself. During a posher party at Cabot's mansion overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, where Derek's providing security, he and Brooklyn overhear an argument between Ingrid and Cabot's butler, Hobson. The winning look-alike, down-at-heels book lover Tom Cantwell, bears such a striking resemblance to Cabot that his wife and mother-in-law are truly uneasy. And then Joseph announces that he and Tom are going to imitate Twain's book and actually change places. Not everything goes smoothly, though: Hobson refuses to serve as Tom's butler while Cabot is busy taking Tom's place as a janitor. The next morning, Hobson opens an envelope that had been delivered for Joseph; moments later, he falls to the floor and dies. Brooklyn realizes that the papers he was holding were coated with a poisonous formula featured in an exhibit at the library. Brooklyn and Derek's attempts to determine who wanted to kill Hobson, or possibly Cabot, is made more difficult by several attempts on Tom's life. A minor mystery buttressed by interesting tidbits on bookbinding and Mark Twain.

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