Death of a Bookseller

January 15, 2023
A persistent Middlesex police officer plunges into the surprisingly cutthroat world of bookselling in this savory reprint first published in 1956. Ever since helping him home after a night spent drinking too much, Sgt. Jack Wigan has become a friend of Michael Fisk, who's repaid the favor by teaching him a good deal about the trade in valuable old books. The lessons and the friendship end abruptly when Fisk is stabbed to death in his flat. The most prominent clue is one that's gone missing: a copy of Keats' Endymion that the poet had inscribed to himself in celebration. A run-in Wigan has with Fred Hampton, a rival book runner who's always on the lookout for titles he can sell to collectors, makes him wonder if Hampton, whose violent temper is well known among other book runners, from "Charlie Boy" North to beautiful, brutal Ruth Brent, got carried away and killed Fisk. Seconded to DI J. Saggs of the Brabant CID, he helps assemble the evidence for an airtight case against Hampton. Even after Hampton's conviction, however, Wigan has doubts about whether he's really guilty, and his misgivings grow as the date of the execution looms. Enlisting North as his paid helper, he casts a wider net his superiors clearly don't approve of and soon discovers unsavory behavior among so many runners that it's a good thing their fellowship has had 70 years to recover from Farmer's canny imprecations. Not a unique treasure but a welcome pleasure for fans of classic British mysteries.

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Starred review from January 30, 2023
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.

Starred review from March 1, 2023
The 100th installment of the British Library Crime Classics series, which reissues long out-of-print mysteries primarily from the Golden Age of crime fiction, [ED: is fittingly about rare books and the people who sometimes carry razors and knives to intimidate others seeking the same first editions. We're introduced to this vanished world of cutthroat competition through a chance meeting of a London cop and a rare-books dealer; the latter is pretty wobbly on his legs after visiting a pub to celebrate his discovery of a first edition of Keats' Endymion, signed by Keats himself. The cop and the dealer become friends, with the bookseller introducing the cop into the beauties of rare books and the intricacies and dangers of the trade. Later, on a visit to his new friend, the cop discovers the bookseller in his armchair, a knife protruding from his chest, and the copy of Endymion gone. The cop goes undercover into the demimonde of "runners," whose job is to search out the rarest of books. The plot is fast-paced, the writing jaunty, and the details capture the romance and excitement of the hunt for rare books in the 1950s (the novel was originally published in 1956). An insightful introduction by CWA Diamond Dagger Award winner Martin Edwards nicely complements the tale.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.