THE FATAL FOLIO

A librarian’s move to England is a refreshing change, except for the murders.

Molly Kimball and her mother have answered her great-aunt’s call for help with her family’s Cambridge bookshop, Thomas Marlowe–Manuscripts and Folios, and Molly has developed a romantic relationship with Kieran Scott, bike shop owner and member of an aristocratic family. Kieran’s mother, Lady Asha, is paying Molly to catalogue the library at Hazelhurst House, with a bonus side job investigating the authorship of The Fatal Folio, a gothic novel published under the byline Selwyn Scott. Since the family has no Selwyn on record, Molly is commissioned to ferret out the real author, who might be a Scott ancestor hiding behind a pseudonym. Kieran’s cousin, Oliver, a professor at Cambridge University’s St. Aelred College, would be more than happy to connect the modern gothic he’s writing with publicity on The Fatal Folio. On Guy Fawkes Night, Molly, Kieran, and their friends Daisy and Tim are set to meet Oliver at the Master’s Lodge Gate when they find a young man bleeding to death, stabbed with a knife stolen from St. Aelred. Thad Devine was one of Oliver’s postgraduate students, and his complaint that he had been graded unfairly could have stymied Oliver's promotion to full professor. That puts Kieran’s cousin high on the list of suspects, but after meeting some of Thad’s friends, Molly realizes he was not universally beloved. The friendship she forged with the investigating officer in earlier cases gives Molly an edge in this one, as stolen books, campus politics, and her surprising discovery of another Selwyn Scott manuscript make solving the murder difficult and dangerous.

Plenty of suspects combined with interesting background on gothic novels enliven this Cambridge Bookshop mystery.