'Bookish' Season 1 Concludes with "Such Devoted Sisters"

Bookish's second mystery, "Deadly Nitrate," concluded with the reveal that most people had already guessed, that Book and Trottie took in Jack because they knew his father, Felix. Jack had already come to that conclusion as well. However, his heteronormative instincts had led him to the conclusion most would have landed on in 1945: that Trottie was his long-lost mother. Nothing so clean cut, I'm afraid, as Gabriel Book might say. In point of fact, Felix was Book's boyfriend, not Trottie's. Jack probably wouldn't have taken that well to begin with. But paired with Gabe and Trottie explaining that LGBTQ+ people exist and have ways of fitting into society as best they can, and it's all too much to process.

Unsurprisingly, "Such Devoted Sisters" now opens with Jack in the drawing room of this week's titular siblings, Ruhije (Angeliki Papoulia) and Nafije (Rina Krasniqi). The displaced Albanian royals (who still style themselves as Princesses) reside in the Walsingham Hotel and are concerned about assassination attempts. Jack's calm cockiness lands him a bodyguard position. However, Jack and his employers aren't the only ones at the hotel. While Nora and Book quite literally chill at home since they can't afford the gas meter, Trottie is out on a date with an absolutely clod, Captain Victor Orr (Mark Umbers), whom she knew before the war.

Deeply drunk and harassing the staff, Orr first sloshes his booze all over himself, sending Trottie to Jack for help, despite some other patron handing her a towel. They manage to get Orr to the bar, where he promptly starts hitting on the sisters once he realizes Trottie's not coming upstairs with him at the end of the night. Then he takes a sip of the drink in front of him and promptly dies.

Let's start with the obvious issue here. Trottie was the one on the date with Orr, a married man; she's automatically a suspect. Morris is the one dispatched to Book's shop to rub it in his face that Trottie is "cheating," as Bliss and pathologist Dr. Calder (Nadia Albina) dust for fingerprints. Book arrives to help interview royalty with a copy of the Kanun of Scutari (the Albanian bloodfeud laws), and discovers Orr conveniently rented the room next door to the Princesses, allowing him and Trottie to spy on them. (Thanks, Cap!)

Nafije archly informs Book and Bliss that the glass Orr drank had been meant for her – part of their assassination prevention protocols. They demand that the hotel staff be questioned, as clearly these are the ones who wish to murder them. Book already knew the sisters were in the hotel; the assignment D was dangling at the end of Episode 2, which he failed to refuse, was "keeping an eye on them." We should note that most of the staff also had reason to kill Orr. Eadie Rattle (Isabelle Connolly), the maid, was propositioned by Orr; the bartenders, Marco Barberini (Harry Taurasi) and Ismail Guzili (Anton Antoniadis), were the ones making the drinks, and the latter of whom is (or was) dating Eadie. The daughter of a communist, she dumps Guzili for not standing up for her.

When questioned, Barberini and Guzili actually know a lot about Orr, including that he was M-6 and banged a different woman next door to the sisters every Friday. They believe Nafije spiked the glass before swapping it out, but Morris arrests Ismail anyway.

Then there's Edmund Kind (Paul McGann), the hotel manager and another of Gabe's ex-boyfriends, who used to run a gay bar in the hotel's cellar during the war. He's fully in on the whole Jack situation and was the one who recommended him for the bodyguard position. He's also got a much larger problem on his hands: Someone sabotaged the oil-powered generator that powers the entire building, leaving all our characters heading to bed in flickering lights, and plunging the whole building into darkness just in time for a gunshot to sound from Ruhije and Nafije's suite.

When the lights come back on at the beginning of the second episode, Ruhije has shot Eadie, but blessedly only grazed her arm; she also attempted to shoot Book and missed. Eadie, who Kind suspected of sabotaging the boiler, was fired just before being sent up with the giant bottle of champagne Trottie ordered. It's not clear if she assumed the wrong room or decided to fire the cork at Nafije as a parting shot, but for all that Eadie's "communist" bit earlier was over the top, watching her scam a night in the royal suite for her silence (complete with use of a toothbrush!) is delightful.

No one arrested in the first episode ever did it, so Guzili is free to go. After spending the day in bed, Eadie finds Jack downstairs, telling him he'd be better off working in a bookshop than these pathetic idiots, and then asking him out on a date. When she returns to the hotel for lunch (all on the Albanian dime), Guzili admits he sabotaged the generator and that he never meant for her to be fired; he was just so guilty that Orr had hurt her, and he had done nothing. He tells her he's going to tell Kind and be fired in her stead.

At this point, we can exclude the Princesses as the targets; Ruhije is the one who has been writing her poison-pen notes to make them seem important. Orr was the intended victim. Trottie is dispatched to check in with Orr's wife, Sylvia (Elizabeth Berrington), who turns out to have been the one who handed her the towel in the opening scene. She usually hangs out at the hotel as well, and though she didn't poison her husband, she did pity what he had become.

Meanwhile, Morris has become convinced they got the wrong bartender. In Orr's diary of conquests, he notes an "M. Barberini," and Orr swung both ways. Book recognizes that Morris has found a clue, even if he has the wrong end of the stick, and after consulting with a few books back in his shop, gathers everyone together at the hotel bar for the denouement. The "M Barberini" in Orr's diary was Maria, Marco's sister, who was put in an internment camp in the U.K. when the war broke out. Orr slept with her multiple times, then put her on the ill-fated final voyage of the Arandora Star, bound for Canada. Marco confesses that he realized who Orr was, took advantage of the moment, and popped a hydrochloric ice cube into his drink. Marco then attempts suicide using the same ice cubes... but unfortunately, Book already swapped them out. On his way out, Marco does his fellow bartender a solid and takes the blame for the generator sabotage. Kind offers Eadie her job back, which she happily accepts. Then, once reinstated, she loudly resigns on the spot.

With the sisters no longer needing a bodyguard, Jack finds himself sent back to Book's by Kind. He arrives just as Mrs. Goodwin stops by to announce her divorce and buy a few books on travel. Book of course hires him back, and then finally reveals the truth about their relationship. However, Felix died sometime after 1935, and Book has never been able to find anything on it, since no one ever knew about them. (Paired with Felix and Book's closeted goodbye earlier in the hour, this episode is an emotional battering ram.) He took Jack in because he's doing right by Felix, and forming the family he once dreamed about. But also because Jack, as Felix's son, will be able to help him finally investigate the case he wishes to solve most of all.

All six episodes of Bookish are streaming on PBS Passport for members and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. Season 2 will premiere in the U.K. in 2026 and follow on PBS sometime in the 2026-2027 television season.