Books: Booked to Die By John Dunning (1992)

"Denver homicide detective Cliff Janeway may not always play by the book, but he is an avid collector of rare and first editions. After a local bookscout is killed on his turf, Janeway would like nothing better than to rearrange the suspect's spine. But the suspect, local lowlife Jackie Newton, is a master at eluding the law, and Janeway's wrathful brand of off-duty justice costs him his badge. Turning to his lifelong passion, Janeway opens a small bookshop -- all the while searching for evidence to put Newton away. But when prized volumes in a highly sought-after collection begin to appear, so do dead bodies. Now, Janeway's life is about to start a precarious new chapter as he attempts to find out who's dealing death along with vintage Chandlers and Twains."

I was working in the retail book business when Booked to Die by John Dunning was released in 1992. I remember it well, knew it got some great reviews, and knew that (even at that time) the book was bound to be a perennial backlist title. But at the time, I was still reading mostly fantasy novels and after having burned myself out on whodunits in the late 1970s and early 80s, I was not really interested in reading mystery novels with pun-like titles (and to this day, we get horribly pun-like whodunits that have all the depth of a puddle).

Still, when I was reading Agatha Christie in High School and never really capturing all the clues that lead to the killer –though Christie was known for her complex plotting and multiple red herrings- I began to think myself an idiot. So I did attempt to read broader, less complicated whodunits only to find a lot of them boring, convoluted, and uninteresting. Christie may have cheated us by having the real killer pop up in one scene and never heard of again until the last twenty pages, but I have to admit she created some wonderfully knotty stories with cast of neurotic characters.

I also thought that this new book series was mostly a one-trick pony. I could not see Dunning really going to town like Sue Grafton would do with her Alphabet series. Then again, maybe he was aware of that, as he only produced five books between 1992 and 2006.

I liked this book a lot and found his Cliff Janeway detective to be flawed, funny, and intelligent, but not have overtly developed powers of observation that crime fiction is riddled with. But the theme of books, collectible books, and passion that some people have for them is what really drew me in. In the pre-internet world, book collecting was a journeyman’s job. Much like the Hoover salesmen of a bygone age, there were bookscouts who went from city to city, state to state searching local Goodwills, jumble sales, estate sales, used bookstores in search of an elusive 1^st edition of almost any novel, though the ones done by the early masters (like Steinbeck, Chandler, and Hemingway) were the real Holy Grail's.

Yes Janeway is at times a trope filled cop –he breaks the rules, he’s tough but has a heart of gold- but the way Dunning writes him, you can’t help but like him. Being an avid collector of books helps, as well. I did not like the whole subplot with Jackie Newton. It was one trope of the cop genre I think Dunning should’ve avoided.

I will probably get to the rest of the books, but with less time in front of me than behind, that effort may take some