Murder is Binding by Lorna Barrett

Review: Ever since I started reading Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile Mystery series, when I go to look for mystery books, I’m inundated with a huge selection of books with gimmicky premises. A Library Lover’s Mystery. A Museum Mystery. An Orchard Mystery. A Cat Bookshop Mystery. A Scrapbooking Mystery. And while I have previously balked — and maybe sometimes still do — at these books, I decided to try one. So, I read the first book in the Booktown Mystery series. The premise of this series is the town of Stoneham, New Hampshire, whose main source of income are bookshop tourists who come to browse the village’s many used and rare bookshops. The protagonist is Tricia Miles who owns a mystery bookshop and becomes the lead suspect when her neighbor is killed in a cookbook shop. My overall opinion is that it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either. I have always found myself sucked into Ms. Carlisle’s writing but did not find myself as eager for Ms. Barrett’s. Her main character just wasn’t as appealing to me but I did like all the descriptions of the different bookshops and found myself wondering if a place like Stoneham could exist in the real world. I don’t consider “Murder is Binding” to be a waste of time but I’ll probably try some other gimmicky premises rather than continue reading this one.