'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.