Death of a Bookseller: the instant Sunday Times bestseller! The debut suspense thriller of 2023 that you don't want to miss!

Product Information

Originally published in 1956 this book has been issued again as part of the British Library Crime Classics series. Also, though it is nice that the detective in question finds external collaborators...well, there are some chapters where the protagonist does nothing or almost nothing and it is the others who carry out the real detective work. The world of the antiquarian book trade was fascinating and a complete revelation to me. Being written and set in the 1950s also added to the appeal of this book. The historical details were fascinating and I enjoyed spending a few hours there. The language and behaviour of the characters was of its time and was at once more formal and polite – but also ruthless and cut-throat. The mystery was well written and I found myself unable to decide who to trust. I was hooked. The rare book business is shown as home to all kinds of skulduggery and disreputable people, some truly loving the books but others simply seeing them as a way to make money from gullible collectors. Farmer shows us all levels, from the man selling books from a barrow, to the large traders selling from shops and catalogues, to the American millionaire, willing to pay any price or break any law so that his library will be better than anyone else’s. Farmer makes a few comments that suggest he may not have been pleased at so many rare British books making their way into American collections, and also hints a little sniffily that some collectors never read the books they display so proudly. It all felt very authentic to me, written by a man who clearly knew what he was talking about. And there’s lots of enjoyable references to specific rare first editions, and an indication of how authors rise and fall in the fashionable stakes of the collectibles market, sometimes on something as simple as a new film or TV adaptation of one of their books. When Roach spots a copy of I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer in Laura's bag, she thinks she's found something of a soulmate in her fellow employee. Laura, it turns out, is actually disgusted by true crime, and is not overly fond of Roach.

a collaborator of the detective, suddenly disappears and Wigan doesn't care too much about what might have happened to him ... not seeing him, he thinks he will wait a few more days to look for him, even though he knows that the situation could be dangerous ... and then in reality he doesn't even look for the man! There’s no need for a sequel, but I kind of want one. I want to see what happened next and what the future held for our characters. Alice Slater, you are a little genius! This book has everything, it’s dark, it’s gory and grimy, it’s fast paced, and it’s also got that quintessential British humour and relatable-ness which I adore. I admit, it was nothing like I was expecting. I was expecting it to be a murder mystery, or crime novel. But it’s not really. It was so layered. It’s got this power about it, but also this humour, it’s creepy and unsettling and beautiful to read.This book got 3-stars from me for several different reasons not necessarily because of the story, but I learned some things of interest. Slater’s darkly comic debut follows the increasingly uneasy relations between two co-workers who have very different investments in true crime. Alice Slater’s compelling debut is a brooding tale of obsession told from the alternating perspectives of two women, Roach and Laura thrown together through their jobs at a struggling bookshop in Walthamstow, an up-and-coming area of London. Both are drawn to true crime but for vastly different reasons. Roach is a veteran fan of true crime, much of her spare time taken up by podcasts, shows and books that delve into the practices and processes of serial killers from Ted Bundy to the Manson family. Laura’s drawn to similar narratives but for her it’s all about the victims, something that’s rooted in a traumatic incident from her childhood. Isolated and socially awkward, Roach outwardly despises the normies all around her but something about Laura makes her yearn for connection, while Laura’s repelled by Roach and her associations with the seamy and the salacious, as well as her shabby, down-at-heel appearance. Then a chance event gives Roach the perfect opportunity to get closer to Laura, in ways Laura could never have imagined. It's a creepy story in places and the end is fitting. I loved the writing but sometimes I got a bit nauseous from reading about the huge amounts of alcohol that’s consumed. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a classic mystery, especially if you are happy to accept that in 1956 people viewed many major issues differently than we do today.

I love how uncomfortable this book made me. Roach's obsession with serial killers. When looked at it through Laura's eyes, it's unsettling. Even though I do like True Crime, I'm more in the vein of using as an educational guide to stay alive, not the fascination with the murderer themselves. I'm much more drawn to missing - but I loved the uncomfortable struggle of Roach's POV and her spiraling.

Subscribe to our e-letter

Laura Bunting, she with the festive family name, is the woman who is very dedicated to her work, only wears colour-coordinated clothing and doesn’t realize she has more in common with Roach than she thinks. Laura’s mother was murdered by a serial killer, a fact that she mostly wants to keep a secret. But keeping secrets for Roach is difficult, because Roach is always snooping. The story explores the danger of our fascination with true crime and as a person who only really reads thrillers and listens to true crime Podcasts, it made me take a pause and think about whether I am too drawn to these areas and whether I need to explore other areas of interest. At the end of the book, Roach gets away with everything. Nothing happens to her. And Laura? The victim? She is seen as the person who went crazy and caused all this drama. That everything was always in her head. I have never hated a book from beggining, middle, end, as much as I did this one.