If you’re like me, you will heartily embrace the new series by Allison Kingsley, inaugurated by Mind Over Murder, the first Raven’s Nest mystery. Introducing series protagonist Clara Quinn, and deviating from the usual mystery bookshop setting, Kingsley creates a new twist on the bookshop subgenre—i.e., the Raven’s Nest, the bookstore in question, houses an eclectic mix of new age and occult books, along with an extensive selection of cookbooks. Clara, cousin of the owner of the Raven’s Nest, is a recent refugee from New York and failed love. When she returns to her quaint Maine hometown, her cousin Stephanie strong-arms her into helping out in the store. Shortly after her arrival, the body of Ana, the nasty busybody from the adjoining shop, is discovered in the basement of the Raven’s Nest. Unfortunately, bookshop employee Molly becomes the prime suspect since she closed the store on the night in question and, even worse, made an untimely comment the previous day out of exasperation with Ana. In order to prove Molly innocent, Stephanie convinces Clara to use the Quinn Sense, a potent psychic power, to discover the true murderer from a pool of viable suspects. What follows is a skillful amalgam of mystery new age and romantic plot strands, certain to appeal to fans of these genres—and to numerous others, as well. Kingsley and her heroine Clara Quinn will return soon—but not soon enough—to continue the saga set in the happy, yet hapless, bookshop. And with the demise of the big-box bookstores, we wish the Raven’s Nest and its ilk all the luck—albeit fraught with murder and mayhem—in the world.

Loren Estleman’s stories about Valentino, the film detective, not the movie star, have been appearing in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for over ten years now. Valentino lives in an old renovated movie theater, and he makes the money he needs to continue the renovations by tracking down prints of films that are thought to be lost forever. Often there’s murder involved, and Valentino has to become another kind of sleuth. Now all the stories have been collected into one volume, Valentino: Film Detective and there’s also an introduction by Estleman, who obviously loves old movies as much as his character. If you like films and good writing, you need a copy of this book.

These stories are as tough as they come, full of meth cookers and dogfights and rusty pickup trucks, populated by characters as vivid as your neighbors, except that you wouldn’t want to live next door to any of them. Bill’s career is going to take off fast, since the first three stories in the book, collectively called “The Hill Clan Trilogy,” are scheduled to appear in Playboy. Here’s a chance to read a writer who’s going to be around a long time.

There aren’t a lot of mystery novels out there where philosophers’ names get tossed around like confetti (Hegel, Strindberg, Foucault, Derrida, Heidegger, Kant, et al.), but in Lawrence Douglas’ The Vices you’ll run into a baker’s dozen of them. In deeply reflective, gorgeous prose, Douglas spins the yarn of brilliant but disturbed philosopher Oliver Vice, the fictional author of Paradoxes of Self, who disappears during an ocean voyage. Was he murdered? Did he commit suicide? Or did he simply think himself into a more elevated plane of existence? Oliver’s friend, the unnamed narrator of the story, finds himself sucked into the dysfunctional Vice family dynamics when he attempts to find out what really did happen aboard that ship. The main players here are aging Hungarian beauty Francizka, Oliver’s manipulative mother; Bartholomew, Olivier’s elephantine, slow-witted brother; and a coterie of hangers-on, all of whom are hiding something.

In an adults-only flashback, we are whisked alongside Oliver into a no-holds-barred sex club. The philosopher is so jaded that although he partakes of the sexual smorgasbord, he finds it all pretty dull. In between the eyebrow-raising escapades of this peculiar cast of characters, we are treated to several pages of Oliver’s cerebral tome. Readers who are philosophically inclined will gobble it up; those who aren’t won’t. As for myself, I became so intrigued with Paradoxes of Self that I was disappointed when the author stopped quoting from it and began exploring the more mundane worlds of art forgery and blackmail. While there are mysteries galore in The Vices, it’s actually a literary novel. Or a philosophy treatise. Or an abnormal psychology monograph. Or...oh, what difference does it make? Oliver and his family and friends are so outrageously entertaining in their neurotic complexities that you’ll find yourself enjoying every perverse one of them, whatever they do or to whom they do it.

Every now and then we all love a little snark, and L.C. Tyler’s The Herring in the Library dishes it up in a generous serving. With a wink and a nod to the coy English cozies of yesteryear, Tyler delivers the laugh-intensive story of “third rate crime writer” Ethelred Tressider, and his astute, long-suffering agent Elsie Thirkettle. The death of the story duly arrives when Sir Robert “Shagger” Muntham invites Ethelred to Muntham Court for dinner. Shagger is dead by dessert, found strangled in his study, which is, of course, locked from the inside.

Whodunnit? Among the wildly eccentric characters in attendance at this deadly dinner are Lady Muntham, Shagger’s voluptuous wife (rumor has it Shagger met her in a topless bar and fell in love during a lap dance); Felicity Hooper, an acid-tongued novelist once rejected by Ethelred’s agent; and Clive Brent, the business partner Shagger involved in a dishonest deal, then abandoned to face the music alone.

Told in first person narratives by Ethelred and Elsie, the two often sound like an old married couple who loves to bicker. Ethelred is hilariously blockheaded, especially where beautiful women are concerned, but sharp-eyed Elsie sees things as they are. She’s delightfully waspish in her commentaries on the British upper class, most of whom she considers beneath contempt. In addition to these dual points of view, we also hear from Master Thomas, Ethelred’s fictional series character, who is based on the clerk in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Master Thomas is smarter than Ethelred, but not by much. The droll humor in this frothy mystery will have you snickering for days.

Features

And Justice for All

A brief on current legal thrillers sure to delight fans of courtroom drama.
by Jon L. Breen

Livia J. Washburn

Humor, appealing characters, small-town charm, and the occasional romance make this author’s several series cozy favorites.
by Brett Weiss

Garrow’s Law

A fascinating TV series about the 18th-century barrister dubbed “The Robin Hood of the courts.”
by Jon L. Breen

Stephen Hunter

Early misfortune only spurred this author to work harder—and today it still enriches his work.
by Oline H. Cogdill

Gifts for Mystery Lovers

Make yourself popular this holiday season with these surefire hits.
by Kevin Burton Smith

Marcia Muller

On being friends with your PI, sending messages to readers, and the immortality of books.
by Oline H. Cogdill

John C. Boland

What if evolution presented mankind with present-day competition?
by Ethan Cross

Protecting Your Book Collection

by Nate Pedersen

The Murders in Memory Lane: Scott Meredith, Part II

Meredith ran his agency like a pirate ship, as one former cabin boy recalls.
by Lawrence Block

What’s Happening with Peter Bowen?

A chat with the author of the Gabriel Du Pré mysteries set in Montana.
by Brian Skupin

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Small Press Reviews: Covering the Independents

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“Dido Hoare, the world-famous soft-touch antiquarian book dealer,” is how Marianne Macdonald’s sleuth introduces herself in Death’s Autograph, the first entry of a delightful bibliomystery series.

Marianne Macdonald. Photo: Carol Latimer.

Dido makes her living in the book trade but it’s the human interest stories that follow the books as they move from owner to owner over decades or centuries that really grab her interest. Getting involved in those stories sometimes threatens her life—and makes for compelling reading.

Dido, The Woman

Dido was named, as she tells it in Ghost Walk, for “the Queen of Carthage whom Aeneas had abandoned on his way to more important masculine pursuits like founding the city of Rome.” Hoare, pronounced in one syllable, is a venerable English name that author Marianne Macdonald may have chosen to be mischievous.

Dido herself is immediately likeable. She speaks her mind, drinks her share, and has chronically poor judgement when it comes to attractive men.

The reason she’s a store owner in the first place is because she couldn’t resist the charm and good looks of her ex-husband Davey. Davey dealt in antique prints and Dido worked in the book business, so when they married, her father Barnabas thought it appropriate to set them up with their own shop as a wedding present. Davey soon departed and the sign above the door was changed to read simply, “Dido Hoare Antiquarian Books and Prints”.

Like her creator, Dido went to Oxford. According to Marianne Macdonald, after Dido finished her studies she went to New York with a friend and worked in the publishing business for a couple of years, returning to England after her mother died to keep an eye on her aging father, who was a bibliophile himself. Dido learned about rare books over the next two years working at a big Charing Cross Road bookshop specializing in 19th and 20th century titles.

Dido’s Business

Dido Hoare Antiquarian Books and Prints occupies the first floor of a two-story Georgian cottage in Islington, “an up and coming area of North London.” Her stock fills overflowing floor-to-ceiling shelves that leave only narrow aisles for maneuvering.

For anyone interested in the book business, the day-to-day details that Macdonald incorporates into the stories make fascinating reading. In Death’s Autograph, Smoke Screen, and Three Monkeys, for instance, the reader accompanies Dido to private homes to inspect libraries for sale, and learns first-hand her process for appraising a collection and making a bid. There are also the logistical problems of storing boxes of books until she has time to deal with them, and what to do with the excess when she buys too much. She attends book auctions, and uses catalogs from other dealers to look for good deals and to help price her own stock.

Dido sells books both to customers who come into the store and to attendees at the periodic book fairs she participates in, such as the regular monthly book fair on Russell Square. But the bulk of her sales come through the mail. A constant in the series is the necessity of working on her own catalog, which she issues four to five times a year mostly for the benefit of the British and foreign university libraries which form the backbone of her customer list. In Smoke Screen Dido finally gets online and enters the world of internet sales. By Road Kill she has her own website.

Psalmista monasticum, Courtesy Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense

Dido’s Circle

Dido’s ex-husband Davey only appears in the first book, Death’s Autograph. He works his way back into Dido’s life, causes mischief, then suddenly departs again leaving her to try to make sense of the considerable muddle he has created.

Besides leaving Dido with a bookstore, Davey also leaves her with a cat, called Mr. Spock, and a baby on the way. Baby Ben makes his first appearance in Ghost Walk. By Smoke Screen he’s ten months old and by Road Kill he’s started to walk and talk. The character of Ben helps MacDonald mark the passage of time by the stages of his development. He also serves as an admirable asset in her investigations: an excuse for Dido to end an interview and get home, a reason to grab the diaper bag (which holds her cellphone) and conveniently disappear into the bathroom, or simply as a way to attract attention and get people talking to her. Ben also deepens the story through Dido’s new understanding of love and commitment and the complications of her life as a single mother.

Dido’s father, Barnabas, is the co-star of the series and serves as sage advisor, business partner, and sometimes cohort in crime. Professor Barnabas Hoare held an Oxford chair in English. After retirement, and especially after his wife died, he found himself at loose ends. As Dido’s business and personal life grew more demanding, he stepped in to help.

The interplay between Dido and Barnabas is one of the great pleasures of Macdonald’s series. They live apart—he in a flat in a converted mid-Victorian villa, she in an apartment above the store—but they keep close tabs on one another. Barnabas is four months past a heart attack when we first meet him and Dido is concerned about his health.

Dido’s family is rounded out by her older sister Pat, respectable and married with a house and family in the suburbs. Pat tends to be overprotective but she can be counted on to “be there” when needed.

Despite her busy schedule, Dido also has her share of romantic entanglements. She first encounters Detective Inspector Paul Grant in Death’s Autograph and he continues in her life in an on-again-off-again relationship “similar to the one he has with his wife.” Investigative journalist Chris Kennedy first trifles with her affections in Die Once and makes a return appearance in Three Monkeys.

With each book Dido enlarges her circle, with characters reappearing as needed and sometimes providing stories’ central complications. Babysitter Phyllis, a no-nonsense Australian, regularly looks after Ben and frees up Dido to run her book business and chase down killers. College student Ernie, born in Sierra Leone and “built like a tank,” is directed to Dido when she has need of a computer guru.

Dido’s Creator

Marianne Macdonald had her first book published when she was 16 years old. A native of Canada, she studied at McGill University and Oxford, and then spent years as a university instructor before returning to writing with the Dido books. The first in the series, Death’s Autograph, came out in 1996, and the eighth, Faking It, is coming out from Severn House this fall.

In the front pages of one of the novels, Macdonald gives the candid caveat that “all the characters in my books are purely autobiographical.” One can only guess at how much of Dido comes from Macdonald herself, and at the sources of her other characters. Surely Barnabas and his colleagues had their inspiration in Macdonald’s days studying at Oxford and teaching at various British universities. Macdonald credits her now-former husband, antiquarian bookdealer Eric Korn of ME Korn Books, with advising her on bookselling practices, and being the mother of sons undoubtedly contributed to Macdonald’s endearing characterization of Ben.

The Dido Hoare series borders on being a “cozy” because of the continuing cast of regular characters, and the homey scenes of daily life in Dido’s little flat although the tone and the world view are darker than one might expect. The bookstore milieu is certainly comfortable and pleasant. The stories unfold at a pace befitting the antiquarian book trade and if plots tend to ramble and loose ends get left dangling—well, life is like that.

Ideally, one should start reading this series with the first book, but it’s by no means a necessity. For a full appreciation, it does help to have an interest in books and the book business. But then, you wouldn’t have read this far if you didn’t already have that, would you?

The Dido Hoare Novels

Death’s Autograph, 1996
Ghost Walk, 1997
Smoke Screen, 1999
Road Kill, 2000
Blood Lies, 2001
Die Once, 2003
Three Monkeys, 2005
Faking It, 2006

Verna Suit reviews mysteries, writes occasional short fiction, and constructs crossword puzzles professionally.

This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Fall Issue #96.