Cozy Mystery Review: The Twelve Books of Christmas | Kate Carlisle | A Bibliophile Mystery #17

Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile Mystery series is another cozy mystery series that I have popped in and out of. I hope to eventually read them all, but I find that they are so easy to enjoy in any order when you’re in the mood for that truly bookish cozy mystery for the book lover soul. Carlisle is an incredibly gifted writer, and this series always delights me. This week I read her seventeenth book in the series, The Twelve Books of Christmas and it is such a wonderful holiday mystery!

Review | The Twelve Books of Christmas

If you’re new to the Bibliophile Mysteries, they center around Brooklyn Wainwright, who is a book restoration expert and her husband Derek Stone, who is a former spy. When The Twelve Books of Christmas opens, they are hosting a large gathering of family and friends at their home in California.

The festivities (and holiday stress) are interrupted when Brooklyn receives a call from her friend Claire in Scotland. Claire and her fiancé Cameron McKinnon want to get married just after midnight on New Year’s Day and they’re hoping Brooklyn and Derek can be there for their ceremony. Brooklyn, Derek, and their parents can take Derek’s private jet, so the sudden travel plans aren’t an issue and the group heads to Scotland.

Claire warns Brooklyn that she has a mystery at the castle for her to solve when she arrives. There are twelve Christmas-themed books that went missing from the library at Castle McKinnon after they hired a librarian (Olivia) to help with some organization work. Brooklyn has a bad feeling about Olivia and her mother agrees. But it seems Olivia isn’t the only one who has bad intentions about Claire—there are a family in the village who begrudge Claire’s engagement to Cameron, believing that their eldest daughter Bitsy should be marrying him. They are doing everything they can to scare Claire off.

In addition to Christmas, the Castle and village are preparing for Hogmanay—the celebration of the Scottish New Year. Unfortunately this celebration also invites some of the people from the village to the castle for preparations. As holiday events kick off, Brooklyn and Derek also spend time searching the castle for the missing books. But their search uncovers something unexpected—a dead body in one of the towers. The body forces Claire and Cameron to postpone their wedding out of respect, but soon they have another body to contend with.

Brooklyn sets aside the mystery of the missing books to help solve the more pressing murders—but it may turn out that the mysteries are linked, if only she can figure out how, why, and most importantly…who.

Claire and Cameron originally appeared in another book in the series, though you don’t need to read both in order. Castle McKinnon is set on the shores of Loch Ness and the setting nearly jumped out of the book—a credit to Carlisle’s descriptive writing. Traveling through books can be one of the most fun things about reading!

Since the murder occurs at the castle, the murder mystery follows almost a locked room format where the potential suspect list is somewhat fixed. As they sleuth, they begin to find some of the twelve missing books, and I was so curious why exactly those twelve books had gone missing from the library. What did it all mean?

Creepy noises around the castle lead to a haunting, gothic vibe for this cozy mystery. Brooklyn’s sleuthing allows her to begin to clear suspects from the list, but then the second murder occurs at the castle. Brooklyn now has three mysteries on her hands, and it becomes clear that solving one will help solve the others. I always find it so rewarding when cozy mysteries can feature several intertwining mysteries effectively, and Kate Carlisle proves again and again that she is a master at this!

While this cozy mystery is set around the holidays and centers around Christmas books, this would work at any time of the year. Readers will love the setting in the ancestral castle in Scotland and find the mysteries compelling and the locked room format enticing. A perfect mystery to cozy up with!

Thank you to Berkley Publishing for my copy. Opinions are my own.

About the Author | Kate Carlisle

New York Times bestselling author Kate Carlisle is a native Californian who worked in television production for many years before turning to writing. It was a lifelong fascination with the art and craft of bookbinding that led her to write the Bibliophile Mysteries, featuring Brooklyn Wainwright, whose bookbinding and restoration skills invariably uncover old secrets, treachery and murder. Her first book, Homicide in Hardcover, debuted in February 2010, followed by If Books Could Kill, The Lies That Bind, Murder Under Cover, One Book in the Grave, Peril in Paperback, A Cookbook Conspiracy, The Book Stops Here, Ripped from the Pages, Books of a Feather, Once Upon a Spine, Buried in Books, The Book Supremacy, The Grim Reader, Little Black Book, The Paper Caper and The Twelve Books of Christmas. She also wrote a Bibliophile e-novella, Pages of Sin, available in e-format only.

With the publication of A High-End Finish in November 2014, Kate launched the Fixer-Upper Mysteries featuring building contractor Shannon Hammer, who specializes in Victorian home renovation and repair. The series is set in Lighthouse Cove, a seemingly idyllic town with many dark secrets hiding under its floorboards. This Old Homicide, Crowned and Moldering, Deck the Hallways, Eaves of Destruction, A Wrench in the Works, Shot Through the Hearth, Premeditated Mortar, Absence of Mallets and Dressed to Drill continue the series. Three of the Fixer-Upper Mysteries have been brought to the small screen by Hallmark Movies & Mysteries.

Kate’s television credits include numerous game shows, music videos, concerts, and variety shows, including The Midnight Special, Solid Gold and The Gong Show. She traveled the world as a Dating Game chaperone and performed strange acts of silliness on The Gong Show, most notably as a member of the girl group, The Whispers. They didn’t sing, exactly, but spit water on the host of the show.

Kate also studied acting and singing, toiled in vineyards, collected books, joined a commune, sold fried chicken, modeled spring fashions and worked for a cruise ship line, but it was the year she spent in law school that finally drove her to begin writing fiction. It seemed the safest way to kill off her professors. Those professors are breathing easier now that Kate spends most of her time writing in Southern California where she lives with her perfect hero husband.

Kate is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers and Romance Writers of America. She is the proud recipient of the Golden Heart and Daphne du Maurier awards, and her first Bibliophile Mystery received a Best First Mystery nomination from RT Book Reviews. Kate loves to travel and read and drink good wine and watch other people cook.

Despite the appearance of overnight success, Kate’s dream of publication took many, many years to fulfill. If you’re wondering why, check out her author page for the real scoop!

About the Book | The Twelve Books of Christmas

San Francisco book-restoration expert Brooklyn Wainwright and her hunky security-expert husband, Derek Stone, face a locked-room murder mystery during the holidays in Scotland.

In the middle of a wonderful Christmas holiday in Dharma, Brooklyn and Derek receive a frantic phone call from their dear friend Claire in Loch Ness, Scotland. The laird of the castle, Cameron MacKinnon, has just proposed to her! They plan to be married on New Year’s Day, and they want Derek and Brooklyn to be their witnesses. And while they’re visiting, Claire hopes that Brooklyn will be able to solve a little mystery that’s occurred in the castle library—twelve very rare, very important books have gone missing.

Once in Scotland, Brooklyn starts working on the mystery of the missing books but is soon distracted by all of the thumping and bumping noises she’s been hearing in the middle of the night. You’d think the Ghost of Christmas Past had taken up residence. But when one of the guests is poisoned and another is killed by an arrow through the heart, Brooklyn and Derek know this is not the work of any ghost. Now they must race to find a killer and a book thief before another murder occurs and their friends’ bright and happy future turns dark and deadly. (Synopsis from Goodreads)