Deadly Editions
A Scottish Bookshop Mystery
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- ¥1,200
発行者による作品情報
A treasure hunt through Edinburgh gives way to a search for a villain terrorizing the city in the sixth Scottish Bookshop Mystery.
It’s a quiet, snowy morning at The Cracked Spine bookshop, when bookseller Delaney Nichols receives a mysterious visitor, a messenger. He presents her with a perplexing note: an invitation to a meeting with eccentric socialite Shelagh O'Conner, who requests Delaney’s participation in an exclusive treasure hunt. Delaney is intrigued, but also cautious: Shelagh, while charming in person, has a reputation for her hijinks as a wealthy young woman in the '70s. She was even once suspected for the murder of a former boyfriend, though ultimately cleared of all charges.
But Delaney is enticed by the grand prize at the end of the treasure hunt: a highly valuable first edition copy of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. The winner is also to receive the contents of Shelagh's vast library, and all participants will earn a large sum of cash.
The night after the first meeting of the treasure hunters, however, several homes in Edinburgh are robbed in a manner reminiscent of Shelagh's old tricks. And when a man connected to Shelagh is killed, suspicion builds. Except Shelagh herself has disappeared from her home, seemingly kidnapped by the villain.
Terror mounts throughout the city as Delaney attempts to solve the mystery, while trying to evade the killer's clutches. But it’s hard to know who to trust when around every corner, a new monster could be lurking.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In bestseller Shelton's captivating sixth Scottish Bookshop mystery (after 2020's The Stolen Letter), eccentric book collector Shelagh O'Connor invites American Delaney Nichols, who works at the Cracked Spine, an Edinburgh bookstore, and three others to take part in a treasure hunt for her first edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The person who finds this valuable book will also get the entire contents of Shelagh's library. Before Delaney and company accept, one of them asks Shelagh about rumors of her once having been in trouble, and she admits she was suspected of murdering a friend decades earlier. Soon after the hunt gets under way, Shelagh goes missing. Delaney and the others wonder whether she's faking her disappearance and possibly responsible for a recent rash of burglaries as well as a local bartender's murder. Ghostly pubs and blustery winter scenes help create a suitably sinister atmosphere, while distinctive characters and judicious use of Scottish dialect add to the story's appeal. Fans of literary cozies will be rewarded.
