My pick for this week’s Friday Forgotten Book is THE BOOKMAN’S WAKE by John Dunning. The second book in the series, his hero is Cliff Janeway, retired police officer who’d invested his savings into a used and rare book shop in Denver.
He’s asked by another ex-cop, a man of which he’s not fond, to pick up a bond skip and transfer her from Seattle south to Taos, New Mexico. Not interested at first, he accepts when he learns of what she’s accused: assault, attempted murder, and theft of a rare edition of Poe’s The Raven. Oh, there’s also the matter of $5,000 for two days work.
He meets the young woman, Eleanor Rigby(yes, I know) and is charmed by her. She works as a book scout, one who scours book stores, estate sales, flea markets, junk stores, and such for first edition books she can pick up cheap and sell to people like Janeway.
He quickly learns there is more going on than he’s been told. The Grayson Press designed and printed limited editions of books. The Raven was one of their earliest, !949, and only four hundred copies had been produced. This much Janeway already knew.
He learns Rigby’s father had worked for the printer before he was killed a fire in 1969. Just an hour before they are to fly out to Taos, she’s kidnapped and he’s suddenly looking through town for her and the people who want that book.
What are they after? The book is valuable, but not worth what it seems the lengths they will go to to get it. For an ex-cop it’s a dream assignment. Rare books, killers, a kidnapped young woman, a mystery.
Dunning’s prose has an elegance different from anyone else I’ve ever read. Hard to describe, he manages to weave in a lot about the book business without making it look like an info dump. The prices of first editions(for example, $1,000 for To Kill A Mockingbird) are outdated as the book was published in 1995.
Still, it’s worth a read.
Patti Abbott said:
read the first one and liked it a lot.
D.K. Soames said:
I read the first one and liked it too. Then I never got to this one. Maybe someday.
Charles Gramlich said:
Never read anything by him. I’m not sure I was even much aware of his name.
George Kelley said:
John Dunning’s books are all top-notch. Glad you’re bringing his work to the FORGOTTEN BOOKS community.
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