Death of a Bookseller
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"Those who treasure books won’t want to miss this.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"A welcome pleasure for fans of classic British mysteries." — Kirkus Reviews
An honest policeman, Sergeant Wigan, escorts a drunk man home one night to keep him out of trouble and, seeing his fine book collection, slowly falls in to the gentle art of book collecting. Just as the friendship is blossoming, the policeman's book-collecting friend is murdered.
To solve the mystery of why the victim was killed, and which of his rare books was taken, Wigan dives into the world of 'runners' and book collectors, where avid agents will gladly cut you for a first edition and then offer you a lift home afterwards. This adventurous mystery, which combines exuberant characters with a wonderfully realised depiction of the second-hand book market, is sure to delight bibliophiles and classic crime enthusiasts alike.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First published in 1956, this outstanding biblio-mystery from Farmer (1902–1964) opens with a chance encounter on a Middlesex road between Sgt. Jack Wigan, a policeman, and Michael Fisk, a rare book seller. The inebriated Fisk has been celebrating the find of a lifetime: John Keats's own inscribed copy of his poem Endymion. Fisk disabuses the sergeant of the idea that book collecting is a placid occupation, observing, "There are men and even women who would cheerfully kill me to get what I have found today." The two become friends, and Fisk instructs Wigan, who's looking for a new hobby, on the fine points of book collecting. Then Wigan arrives at Fisk's house one day to discover that he has been fatally stabbed in his library, a blood-spattered book about raising the dead beside him; the Keats volume has disappeared. Wigan plunges into investigating the murder, exploring whether the occult tome's presence next to the corpse was just coincidence. Farmer vividly evokes the rare book trade without sidetracking the central question of whodunit. Those who treasure books won't want to miss this reissue in the British Library Crime Classics series.
