Death by the Book
by Lenny Bartulin
Minotaur Books, January 2010, $24.99
Some guys have all the luck. Like Jack Susko, the bookselling protagonist and amateur sleuth in Australian writer Lenny Bartulin’s 2008 entertaining and nicely paced debut (recently published Stateside with a new title). I sell books for a living too, but I can assure you that no rich sexpots like Annabelle Kaspowricz ever seem to throw their voluptuous bodies (“on the curvy side of womanhood”) or any of their other spectacular assets at me the way they do with Jack. Then again, the complications that ensue when Annabelle’s wealthy, but singularly unpleasant, businessman father hires Jack, the proud proprietor of Susko’s Books, a struggling basement shop in Sydney, to track down every copy he can of an obscure poet’s books, might not be worth it. Even at $50 a pop.
Those complications include sleazy business rivals, a disgraced gynecologist, possibly corrupt or at least inept cops, a vengeful crime lord, hired muscle, plenty of dubious poetry and enough dirty family secrets, obsessions and greed to fill a soap opera. In fact, Annabelle’s family is so chronically dysfunctional that they make The Big Sleep’s Sternwoods look like television’s Waltons. And unfortunately, by the time Jack realizes what he’s involved in, it’s far too late to crawl out gracefully. Still, he draws upon just enough unexpected resources of strength and courage (not to mention a bit of wild luck) and a definite way with wisecracks (for example a thug is dismissed as having the “muscle-to-brain ratio of a brontosaurus”) to keep the reader flipping pages. A sly parody of ’30s-era hardboiled fiction or the contemporary real deal? Either way, this stuff is just way too good (and too fun) to be a one-off. Down these mean streets a used book dealer must go, anyone?
Reviewed by Kevin Burton Smith
More from Mystery Scene and this author
- Read an excerpt at the publisher’s site.
- Author’s blog site lennybartulin.blogspot.com
- Purchase Death by the Book at Amazon.com
