The Burglar in the Library

It must be that time of year when I read a ton of formulaic fiction to clear my mind. Bernie Rhodenbarr is back, with another disastrous love affair, another lost piece of pop-culture ephemera (A first edition Raymond Chandler autographed to Dashiell Hammett), and a corpse. The setting is a snowbound B&B masquerading as an English country estate, and with the bodies piling up, Bernie needs to find out the real killer and abscond with his priceless first edition. There’s some cleverness as Block contrasts the tropes of the ‘English drawing room murder mystery’ with the ‘American hard-boiled noir’ story, which a mystery fan will obviously enjoy, but this book might be a little bit too twee and hit a little too close to the obvious plot points to be a proper deconstruction. Not bad, per se, and if you’re on a beach and this book is nearby why not, but nothing you need to seek out either.