LITTLE BLACK BOOK

A hazardous hunt for a missing person moves from California to Scotland.

San Francisco book restorer Brooklyn Wainwright has recently married Derek Stone, a sexy, dangerous, and well-connected former MI6 agent. Shortly after he receives a puzzling package mailed from Scotland containing a signed first edition of Rebecca, they’re visited by a nervous woman named Claire Quinn asking Derek if he'd received a package from Scotland. Claire’s aunt is missing, and her only clue is the postal receipt for the package, which she had found a few days earlier, hidden in her aunt's ransacked apartment, when she arrived for a visit. Claire, an expert on antique weapons, had worked with Brooklyn on the television show This Old Attic. Now they strike up a friendship that will be severely tested. Claire’s aunt Gwyneth Quinn had raised her after her dodgy father vanished, and Derek knows that Gwyneth was an MI6 operative. When Brooklyn and Derek's cupcake-baking, kick-ass neighbor notices a strange man in the garage, they check and find the man with a dagger in his throat; Claire recognizes him as a phony pizza delivery man she’d refused entry. After Claire’s apartment is trashed, they travel to the home of Derek’s parents in Sonoma, where a second man is killed with a dagger and Brooklyn discovers an encrypted message in Rebecca. A trip to Scotland lands them at a castle near Gwyneth’s home, where they encounter more questions than answers in their hunt for a dangerous killer.

A character-driven mystery with plenty of thrilling escapades to keep the plot moving.