Book Review: Fateful Words by Paige Shelton

Bookseller Delaney Nichols is very much enjoying life as a newlywed in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her handsome husband Tom owns a pub just across the way from where she assists at The Cracked Spine, a local institution headed by the rich and eccentric Edwin MacAlister. Delaney is happy to work on cataloging the many treasures Edwin has accumulated in his lifetime—housed now in the warehouse attached to the bookstore—and to help out in the store as needed. But not even her can-do attitude can overcome how nonplussed she is when a brand new task is asked of her: Edwin has to abruptly leave town for a while, leaving Delaney in charge of the annual literary tour he leads for a small group of hand-selected participants:

But that was the rub–it wasn’t just a tour. I could have googled and handled a simple tour just fine. No, Edwin didn’t do things on any sort of normal scale. His guests were treated to a week or so of immersion into parts of the city of Edinburgh and some of its contributions to literature and film. There was too much to be comprehensive, but Edwin loved books and movies and he loved Edinburgh. He would take his favorites from each of those loves and create a memorable journey for his guests–and they were always his guests. He paid for everything.

 

He was so good at it–maybe one of the best from the accolades I’d heard–and he’d done it for decades.

Delaney loves her adopted hometown and its literary history, and is enthusiastic about doing it justice. She knows, however, that enthusiasm is no substitute for Edwin’s vast wealth of knowledge and showmanship. The last thing she wants to do is disappoint the latest batch of tour participants, who’ve flown in from all over the world to take part, often after a lengthy correspondence with her boss about their mutual interest in books.

Delaney’s four guests are understanding enough about Edwin’s absence, especially since he’s already offered to run the tour for them again the following year. But tragedy strikes their very first night: The manager of the hotel where they’re staying suffers a fatal fall off of the hotel’s roof. When one of the tour guests goes missing soon after, leaving a trail of puzzles in her wake, Delaney will have to put all her investigative skills to the test to figure out what’s going on, and how everything, including Edwin’s mysterious absence, is connected to a deadly plot playing out in her beloved city.

In endeavors like this, she’s usually helped by the literary voices inside her head, quoting from books she’s previously read. This time around they’re mostly quiet, though when she finds herself tailing a suspect, one finally comes to her aid:

Was I going to try to follow [the suspect] inside?

 

No, of course I wasn’t going to do that. It was weird that I was following him in the first place.

 

Except, was it?

 

Even if you’re on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.

 

There they were! A bookish voice was speaking up. They’d been so quiet that I couldn’t help but pay attention to this one. My intuition was finally sensing something. It was Will Rogers who spoke, and I always liked hearing his voice in my head.

As always, the bookish voices give sage advice. But will that be enough when she finds herself in mortal peril, with no one to rely on but herself?

Fateful Words is another absorbing installment of the Scottish Bookshop mystery series, as Delaney leads her tour group—and by extension us readers—around one of the most delightful and storied cities in Europe. After reading these books, I always feel both that I’ve had a mini-vacation and that I desperately need a real life getaway to the famed Scottish city. These novels are some of the best advertisements for Edinburgh I’ve ever read.

The mystery itself was also very of the times, deftly spinning a web of conspiracy and counter-conspiracy as The Cracked Spine becomes unwittingly caught up in a ring of very modern criminals. Deftly balancing history with the intrigues of 21st century living, Fateful Words is a thrilling mini-vacation for cozy crime lovers looking for a bookish escapist read.