The Book Supremacy: A Bibliophile Mystery

At the start of Carlisle’s enjoyable 13th Bibliophile mystery (after 2018’s Buried in Books), bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright Stone and her husband, Derek Stone, a former MI6 agent, are honeymooning in Paris. On their last day, they tour the bookstalls along the Seine, where Brooklyn decides to buy a copy of Ian Flemings’s The Spy Who Loved Me as a gift for Derek, who, like James Bond, “is dashing, sexy, brave, and daring.” Back home in San Francisco, Derek reconnects with Owen Gibbons, a friend who used to work for a U.S. intelligence agency and now owns a spy shop called SPECTRE. Owen persuades Derek to loan him the Bond novel, which turns out to be a valuable first edition, for a special display commemorating the shop’s first anniversary. The trouble begins when someone breaks into the shop and tries to steal the book. A related murder is somehow connected to Derek’s past. Book lovers and Bond fans won’t want to miss this cozy. [em]Agent: Christina Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (June) [/em]