While Wills puts Janeway off right away, he gets a better feeling from Geiger’s daughter, Sharon, who rescues abused and maimed horses. Sharon has inherited half of her mother’s book collection and seeks to locate all the books that were once her mother’s, marked by a customized bookplate. Sharon also asks Janeway to look into her mother’s death over ten years ago. Her mother died of an allergic reaction, but Sharon is pretty sure it wasn’t an accident. Janeway’s instincts tell him to get the heck out of Idaho, but he is intrigued by the combination of horses, books and Sharon and decides to stay.

Traversing a landscape that is somewhat familiar to him, Janeway starts looking into the horse racing circuit Geiger was involved in, hoping to find a clue as to who may have known about his wife’s first editions and who could have been stealing them from under the family’s nose all these years. Janeway is suspicious of Geiger’s sons from his first marriage, all dysfunctional at best. As he follows the trail, not only does he get close to a killer, he finds his long time girlfriend may not be as supportive of all that he does as he searches for the truth about the Geigers.

The Bookwoman’s Last Fling will appeal to a variety of readers as John Dunning expertly handles not only the subject of antiquarian books, but that of horse racing. Janeway is a hard character to get to know, and there are many layers to him, layers that readers will enjoy watching peel away slowly. While the people Janeway meets appear tough and hard on the surface, he learns that there is often a private side to people, and he may be learning how to coax it out of them.

Who is stealing the books is as complex a mystery as is what may have happened to Mrs. Geiger decades ago. Sharon is a very earnest young woman, who was marked by her mother’s death at a young age and is learning to fit into the world in a way only she can.

There is subtleness to The Bookwoman’s Last Fling that is appreciated through slow, careful reading, much the way Janeway appraises and valuates book collections. This is a great addition to the Cliff Janeway series.

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry