The Stolen Letter

Scottish Bookshop Mystery Series, Book 5

By: Paige Shelton

Narrated by: Susan Boyce

Heading back to work the day after she returns from her European honeymoon, Delaney Nichols is excited to get back to the Cracked Spine. But as she disembarks the bus and hurries toward the shop, she and another woman collide, sending a stack of books the woman is carrying to the ground.

Delaney's hapless victim's name is Mary, and she and Delaney can't help but notice that they bear an uncanny resemblance to one another. According to Mary, they both also look like the long-beheaded Mary Queen of Scots. Even stranger, Mary believes she is reincarnation of the Scottish queen. But peculiar as Delaney's doppelganger is, she doesn't have time to dwell on it: On her arrival to the bookshop, she learns the Edinburgh city council wants to close the Cracked Spine, citing code violations, and she's determined to stop them.

But when Mary's husband dies in a car explosion - and Delaney learns he was the very member of city council who proposed that the city take a closer look at the bookshop's construction - she starts to wonder if her meeting with Mary wasn't an accident. Edinburgh has become as filled with intrigue and deception as any European court, and Delaney is determined to get to the bottom of this royal mystery.

©2020 Paige Shelton-Ferrell (P)2020 Tantor

Another great mystery

These are wonderful stories set in a country I love from afar. Narrator has done very well with these stories. Typically I don't like when there is a change, but I put a few month's between and new narrator is just as good. Stories are very entertaining!

The Stolen Letter

Another good story from Paige Shelton. The cast of characters return to deal with the threat of the bookstore being condemned to destruction because of a failed building inspection that no one remembers occurring!

A chance meeting between our heroine and a lookalike twenty years older than her, who just happens to believe she is Mary Queen of Scots, keeps the story moving with a few twists and turns along the way.

No doubt you are already a fan and will enjoy this one too, but if you are new to this series, you’ll want to give it a try.

poor premise

An enjoyable series took an irritating turn.. The machinations to acquire the letter were absurd.

Skipped most of it

I was so looking forward to this book. However, two things went wrong. I abhor stories that threaten the “home” or the safe core of the characters and setting. For this series, that’s the Cracked Spine. It’s existence is unjustly threatened by the most conniving people from the beginning of this story on. So, I started skipping the scenes that made me most anxious. What I found was most unfortunate: I could skip the vast majority of the chapters in this book and still know what was happening in the last chapter. That’s a heck of a lot of wasted time.