When palegrapher Dr Anya Brown is offered a role at the Institute of Manuscript Studies at St Andrews, Scotland, she is honoured and more than a little overwhelmed. Anya is just getting used to her fame as the linguist who discovered the key to decoding the famous Folio 9 cryptic manuscript. Professor Diana Cornish, a representative from the university, is so keen for Anya to accept that the terms and package of the offer are much better than anything Anya has been offered from other universities. It’s all too good to resist, even though Anya had set her heart on Yale. With the St Andrews post she would be able to take her boyfriend Dr Sid Hill, a defence against malware specialist, with a role for him too, plus somewhere to live, plus a very good salary. A no brainer really. However is there a more sinister reason for them to be so keen on Anya, and why is everything so secretive?

An interesting plot, and once it got going it was quite fast paced, but a rambling start didn’t capture my attention. More than a stretch of the imagination is needed, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, pure escapism.

Lovers of clues, codes and cryptic puzzles will enjoy the rhymes and riddles, and devotees of spy/covert stories will also enjoy the story line.

I really enjoy this author and eagerly await her new books. Sadly this one just missed the mark for me.

Thank you NetGalley and John Murray Press.

The Burning Library by Gilly MacMillan offers a well-paced literary mystery that fans of Dan Brown will likely enjoy. Two rival secret societies of women — the covert Order of St Katherine and the more overt Fellowship of the Larks — have spent over a century seeking a lost medieval manuscript, guided only by a fragile scrap of embroidery.

When paleographer Dr. Anya Brown joins the Institute of Manuscript Studies in St Andrews, she quickly finds herself caught between the two factions. The story moves briskly between Oxford, Cambridge, and Verona, with historical clues, coded messages, and a plot that grows increasingly tangled.

It’s a bit on the implausible side, but MacMillan keeps the narrative moving and the stakes high. The mix of history, puzzles, and action makes for an easy, readable adventure — if not a deeply nuanced one.