The Book Case by Nelson DeMille

published 2012

I walked to the staircase, which had a sign saying PRIVATE, and began the corkscrew climb. On the way, I tried to recall the two or three times I’d interacted with Mr. Otis Parker here in his store. He was a bearded guy in his early sixties, but could have looked younger if he’d bought a bottle of Grecian Formula. He dressed well, and I remember thinking— the way cops do— that he must have had another source of income. Maybe this store was a front for something. Or maybe I read too many crime novels. I also recalled that Mr. Parker was a bit churlish—though I’d heard him once talking enthusiastically to a customer about collector’s editions, which he sold in the back of the store. I’d sized him up as a man who liked his books more than he liked the people who bought them. In short, a typical bookstore owner.




observations: This short story – a Kindle Single – was recommended to me by my friend Prashant C Trikkanad, of the Chess Comics Crosswords blog. He read my recent entry on the book Miss by LE Usher, set in a London bookshop, and told me of this one, set in a NY bookstore. I’m a fan of Nelson DeMille, and of stories set in bookshops, and a 99p short story doesn’t break my current book-buying embargo, so I was good to go.

It is short and very funny, and tells a fair enough tale of murder in a NY crime bookstore, investigated by one of DeMille’s regular characters, John Corey. DeMille has fun with the whole trope of crime books, shops and publishing – this is typical:

The window on the right featured contemporary bestselling authors like Brad Meltzer, James Patterson, David Baldacci, Nelson DeMille, and others who make more money writing about what I do than I make doing what I do.

I don’t read many of the big best-selling thriller writers, but I make an exception for DeMille - I have enjoyed several of his books, and I really like his humour. I like Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books too, but DeMille is much funnier and more light-hearted: he doesn’t take himself too seriously. I have seen occasional complaints of misogyny in DeMille and that always surprises me - his heroes are somewhat unreconstructed, but I find the women characters good, and his attitudes (not quite all the time, but mostly) very real and pro-women.

The photograph, from Flickr, is from the Nantucket Historical Association.