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Booked to Die: Still the Perfect Bibliomystery Nearly 30 Years Later
A Book Review
Readers are always on the lookout for the next great book, the one that will grab their attention and not let go. Yet even though we’re looking for it, every so often a book catches us by surprise; even more rarely that book becomes part of the very world it seeks to chronicle. Both were the case with John Dunning’s Booked to Die, the first in the remarkable Cliff Janeway Bookman series.
Booked to Die is the story of burned-out cop Cliff Janeway, who quits the police force to become a rare book dealer. Janeway has turned in his badge; he keeps both his gun and his penchant for solving crimes. The mysteries now revolve around the new world of rare books he inhabits, which puts this book squarely in the genre of bibliomystery.
A bibliomystery is one in which a book or manuscript is central to the plot of the novel. The definition can be expanded to include mystery novels in which libraries, librarians, bookstores, booksellers, publishers and/or authors play a key role in the story. The genre existed well before Booked to Die, going back at least as far as Agnes Miller’s The Colfax Book-Plate in 1926 and continuing through the first book in Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, The Godwulf Manuscript, in 1973. But because of its massive success in 1992…
