Murder under Cover: 01/01/15

Murder under Cover by Kate Carlisle is the fourth of the Bibliophile mystery series. Brooklyn's best friend Robin asks her to appraise and repair a potentially rare copy of the Kama Sutra. But the book proves to be dangerous from the very beginning.

As is Brooklyn's curse, people end up dead whenever she's working on a particularly interesting or valuable book. This time it's Robin's sexy one-night-stand. Then it appears Robin's in danger too.

This series goes for violent, bloody deaths. The first one is especially gruesome. But these crimes are also becoming rather predictable — especially in their timing.

And this time before the first crime even happens, the set up is so blatantly obvious that I knew right from the beginning what would be setting off the crime spree. But this is one detail that's overlooked by the main characters until it's time to crank up the drama in the third act.

I still like the series for the book binding details. I hope in later books that the formula will be mixed up a bit. This book didn't have any sort of red herring, misdirection or spare details. Eventually the predictability will drag down the entertainment derived from the book geekery.

Three stars

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