Murder in the Bookshop

by Carolyn Wells

Curtis Evans (Introduction)

Book 50 in the Detective Club Crime Classics series is Carolyn Wells’ Murder in the Bookshop, a classic locked room murder mystery which will have a special resonance for lovers and collectors of Golden Age detective fiction. Includes a bonus murder story: ‘The Shakespeare Title-Page Mystery’.

When Philip Balfour is found murdered in a New York bookstore, the number one suspect is his librarian, a man who has coveted Balfour’s widow. But when the police discover that a book worth $100,000 is missing, detective Fleming Stone realises that some people covet rare volumes even more highly than other men’s wives, and embarks on one of his most dangerous investigations.

A successful poet and children’s author, Carolyn Wells discovered mystery fiction in her forties and went on to become one of America’s most popular Golden Age writers. Penning 82 detective novels between 1909 and her death in 1942, she was mourned in 1968 by the great John Dickson Carr as one of mystery fiction’s ‘lost ladies now well lost’, and remains undeservedly neglected 50 years later. Murder in the Bookshop is a story laced with criminality, locked rooms and bookish intricacies that any bibliophile will find irresistible.

This Detective Club hardback is introduced by award-winning writer and authority on Golden Age detective fiction, Curtis Evans, and includes ‘The Shakespeare Title-Page Mystery’, a murderous tale of literary shenanigans that was one of the last pieces of detective fiction which Carolyn Wells ever published.

• ISBN13: 9780008283025
• Publish Date: 29 November 2018
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 13 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins Crime Club
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 256
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

A re-issued 'classic' that I really, truly wanted to love, but am rating 3 stars only because I feel like I have to give it the benefit of the doubt.  The writing might have been farcical; it might have meant to be satiric.   

If it was either of those things, I didn't get it.  Instead the writing came across as profoundly amateurish and at times, dare I say it, twee.   

I've been sitting on writing this review for weeks, and of course I've forgotten a lot of relevant bits, but amongst the things I can remember:   The scene of the crime is an antiquarian bookshop, which the deceased and his librarian have just broken into.  

When the owner of the shop appears to find the man dead, the librarian standing over the body, he assures the police that 1.) no way the librarian did it, and they should just skip investigating him, and 2.) yes, they broke into his shop, but he was sure they had a very good reason.  

If this had been written by a man, we'd have called him a misogynist.  There's a lot of something akin to mansplaining going on here, where the deceased's wife should be a suspect but really isn't - or, at least, the PI investigating the case can't bring himself to suspect her, because she's so wonderful, and fragile, and beautiful.  Nothing in the text would give testament to the former two, and the latter - who knows?     

The 'mastermind' was a joke.  Think villain from Scooby Doo kind of joke.  And don't even start me on the finale.  If not for those meddling kids...   

Everything, in fact, was so blown out of proportion that I have to believe I've missed something; some tone, rhythm, inside information contained in the writing.  Otherwise there's no way this is something that qualifies to be re-issued.   Other evidence that I'm missing something here:  there's a short story at the end about a mystery concerning a first edition Shakespeare that is good.  Clever, if simple, and much more competently written; the only female character is the mind behind the solution too.   

So in short, I don't know what the hell I read; read at your own risk.

[Aidan Brack (Mysteries Ahoy)]

Wells creates a promising setup for a story but it seems to go nowhere while taking forever to do so.

Read my full review at Mysteries Ahoy!