Puss Reboots: Blog: February 2023: The Game is a Footnote

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Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell
Available Dark by Elizabeth Hand
Blackmail and Bibingka by Mia P. Manansala and Danice Cabanela (Narrator)
Blanche Among the Talented Tenth by Barbara Neely and Lisa Reneé Pitts (Narrator)
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A Design to Die For by Kathleen Bridge and Vanessa Daniels (Narrator)
Dewey Decimated by Allison Brook and Marilyn Levinson (Narrator)
Fly Me to the Moon, Volume 2 by Kenjiro Hata
The Game is a Footnote by Vicki Delany
High Spirits by Carol J. Perry and C.S.E. Cooney (Narrator)
Into the Windwracked Wilds by A. Deborah Baker
Komi Can't Communicate, Volume 3 by Tomohito Oda
Kowloon Generic Romance, Volume 2 by Jun Mayuzuki and Amanda Haley (Translation)
Lore Olympus, Volume Two by Rachel Smythe
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Monkey Prince by Gene Luen Yang and Bernard Chang (Illustrator)
The Neapolitan Sisters by Margo Candela
Nightmare of the Iguana by Ursula Vernon
No Judgments by Meg Cabot
Seven-Year Witch by Angela M. Sanders
6 Times We Almost Kissed by Tess Sharpe
Soul of a Killer by Abby Collette and L. Malaika Cooper (Narrator)
Steeped to Death by Gretchen Rue and Kristin Price (Narrator)
A Tale of Two Princes by Eric Geron
Vampiric Vacation by Kiersten White
Wined and Died in New Orleans by Ellen Byron and Amy Melissa Bentley (Narrator)

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January 2023 Summary

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The Game is a Footnote: 02/10/23

The Game is a Footnote by Vicki Delany (2023) is the eighth book in the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mystery series. Someone is haunting the Scarlet House and after Gemma is reluctantly brought on board to investigate, the historical society's vet dies under suspicious circumstances.

Scarlet House's main problem isn't a supernatural one. It's a financial one. The historical society which owns and runs the house has suffered an income shortfall during the COVID years. Now there is talk among some of the board members to sell the home to save the society.

I am currently on a board of a similar scale nonprofit — except we don't even own the building we use. COVID has been brutal financially to us as well, so the set up to this book rings true.

It's also clear that the "ghost" is looking for something. What's missing or hidden is a big part of the mystery, and remains unspoken until the back third of the book. Gemma, of course, puts it together and if you're an observant reader, you might too. The MacGuffin for this book makes it thematically similar to another mystery I recently finished, The Ghost and the Stolen Tears by Cleo Coyle (2022).

Five stars