By page 56 I was ready to toss this book in the fire. But while half of Europe seems to be currently on fire, I found myself not in reach of a convenient open fire. I read on and luckily the story toned down on the mysogynistic comments from men.

When her old mentor, Abraham, is killed, Brooklyn is asked to finish the job he started. Which seemed a little odd. She found the body and there are rumours she killed him. Wouldn’t the owners want to know for sure their new bookbinder didn’t kill the previous one?

Anyway, the job is to restore an early (probably first, in cozies only first editions are special) edition of Faust. The edition is said to be cursed. Many of its previous owners have died shortly after taking possession of the book. Brooklyn doesn’t believe in any such curse, but she would like to know who killed her mentor.

There is some sort of investigation, as in, Brooklyn trespasses a few homes and rifles through other people’s stuff. But this killer does this too, so that’s okay. Or whatever. And though Brooklyn’s investigation does not involve listing, let alone talking to possible suspects, this could be forgiven because the story has a good pace to it.

There are things to like about this book: it’s not tedious (there is a danger of that if the main character’s job is to dust pages), things are happening and it has a quirky tone.

There are also things I don’t like: the exchanges between Brooklyn and Derek (are they eight? It failed as repartee between adults); Brooklyn’s friend Robin.

Spoiler

When Robin and Brooklyn see Derek on a stake-out outside her apartment, Brooklyn remarks he is stalking her, and Robin claims that this is OK because he is good-looking.

Brooklyn mentions a couple of times she has two sisters. Their names are Savannah, China and London. And that kiss

Spoiler

when she was barely conscious

. Yuk, yuk, yuk.

And, oh yeah,

Spoiler

Brooklyn turned out to be too stupid to live when she decided to taunt a killer knowing full well this person had killed two people the past week.

But how else was the confrontation between Brooklyn and the killer going to come about?

This book would have been better if there had been less of the stupid.