MURDER AT THE BOOK FAIR

Charles offers the second installment in a cozy murder mystery series for book lovers, following Murder at the Estate Sale (2020).

The Antiquarian Book Fair in St. Petersburg, Florida, seems like an unlikely setting for foul play, but it provides a rich background for this appealing whodunit. Emma Clarke and Molly O’Donnell are both antiquarian booksellers based in Atlanta, and each year they meet up at the fair to show off, and hopefully sell, their most valuable acquisitions. When fellow bookseller Jasper Ross goes missing, along with several of Emma’s most sellable books, she teams up with Molly to find him. Shockingly, Jasper’s corpse turns up by a local hotel’s dumpster. Emma is horrified by his demise, and also concerned that the valuable books he borrowed may be lost forever. As local police investigate, other booksellers find that their own most valuable items are vanishing, too. When some of the tomes mysteriously reappear, the sellers are aghast that pages with color plates have been “surgically cut out.” Suddenly, the friendly, close-knit world of the fair takes on a sinister aura as Molly and Emma suspect customers and colleagues alike. They scour used-book and print shops looking for missing volumes, excised color plates, and clues regarding Jasper’s death. Along the way, they find allies and informants, including print dealer Stewart, who understands but deplores the illicit trade in stolen color plates. None of the characters in Charles’ novel are explored in great depth, although romantic tension between Molly and Emma builds to a crescendo, and Emma fights off pangs of jealousy when she meets one of Molly’s former loves. The plot is also sometimes slowed by the author’s atmospheric descriptions: “The shop had a lot of floral and herbal prints, maps, and advertisements from early twentieth-century magazines—hair tonics, radios, shoes, remedies: old ads for ‘Brylcreem—a Little Dab’ll Do Ya.’ ” As the plot unfolds, however, readers with interest in the world of booksellers, and the unusual characters who inhabit that world, are likely to be charmed and delighted.

An eccentric world of antiquarian booksellers comes alive in this uneven but often delightful mystery.