Murder and books

Readers of mystery novels are particularly drawn to stories about books and bookshops. The British Library Classics series has reprinted Death of a Bookseller by Bernard J Farmer, which was originally published in the 1950s and which is a story that tells you a lot about the book trade at the time in which it was written, as well as being a mystery about who killed Mike Fisk.

The police have investigated and think that they have their man but Sergeant Jack Wigan disagrees. Wigan had befriended the bookseller and is a beneficiary of his will. He thinks that the man who has been arrested is innocent but, because of the time in which the book is set, he must find the true culprit quickly before the arrested man is hanged. This involves delving into the murky world of second-hand and antiquarian books, which the author depicts as a shady and cutthroat business.

There are many suspects and plenty of red herrings. The characters, other than Wigan, are not very well developed and the plot determines their actions rather than the other way around. There is also, maybe, a little too much about the intricacies of the book trade, although I did find the information interesting. The solution is one of those that you might not have suspected because there is the revelation of important information at the last moment – this didn’t worry me as I was enjoying the book for itself.

This is an entertaining book with an interesting background. As with all of these reprints the modern reader can find a lot of entertainment in the portrayal of life in the 1950s and the things that the author and the characters take for granted which are not the way that we live today.