Cathy C. (cathyskye) - , reviewed on 4/13/2009 + 2307 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 13

First Line: My teacher always told me that in order to save a patient you'd have to kill him first.

When book restorer Brooklyn Wainwright decided to go into business for herself, it caused a rift between her and her teacher, Abraham Karastovsky. She is relieved when he welcomes her with open arms at a party in the prestigious Covington Library in San Francisco, but a short time later Brooklyn walks into a workroom to find Abraham lying in a pool of blood. Leaving her with a cryptic message and an extremely rare (and supposedly cursed) volume of Faust, she finds herself right in the middle of a murder investigation, complete with family members as suspects and a delectable British security officer.

Although Hardcover in Homicide suffers a bit from wanting to be all things to all people with a wide-ranging cast of characters that could've been pared down, I did enjoy the book. The information about book restoration was fascinating without bogging down the pace. The San Francisco-Napa Valley locales added the perfect ambiance to the story, and Carlisle does have some gems in her line-up of characters-- foremost among them Brooklyn's family. Her parents live in a commune named Dharma in the Napa Valley, and her siblings have similarly geographic names: Austin, China.... Led by Guru Bob, the people of Dharma are quite the interesting bunch to visit, and I'm hoping that future books in the series will let us get to know Brooklyn's siblings better.

Led by a very interesting main character, once this series tightens its focus a bit, it will be a very entertaining one to follow. One small aside: I find it amusing that Homicide in Hardcover is published as a mass market paperback (but then, I can be easily amused)!

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