The Paper Caper: 01/30/24

The Paper Caper by Kate Carlisle (2022) is the sixteenth book in the Bibliophile mystery series. Joseph Cabot, owner of the Clarion paper has put together a look alike contest inspired by The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (1881). To the winner he's offering $100K and that big purse has raised tensions around the city.

While Derek and his security team expect the threats to be against Joseph or his lookalike, it's the head butler who ends up dead, poisoned in a way inspired by the poisonous gold newspapers for Queen Victoria's coronation.

The further along this series gets the more removed the Bibliophile version of San Francisco gets from the city. Even in 2009 when the series started, the big newspaper days were over. The Examiner and the Chronicle had changed places for who had the largest audience.

Joseph Cabot as a benevolent billionaire philanthropist is also somewhere between an anachronism and a pipe dream. He's designed as a Charles Foster Kane character but with a heart of gold. He's also so naive, that I'm surprised he's managed to survive and keep his company.

The biggest problem, though, is how blatantly obvious the murderer is and how woefully ignorant, blind, confused, clueless Brooklyn and Derek are despite years of solving murders together. I swear the only managed to solve this one because the author reached her word or page count and had to wrap up the story.

The next book is The Twelve Books of Christmas (2023).

Three stars

Comments (0)