Seattle Mystery Bookshop

A Great Gift for a Mystery Lover!

Now in, signed first edition hardcovers of A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon. This is a limited run hardcover from Poisoned Pen Press. A trade paperback original from Bantam, Poisoned Pen was asked by Random House to produce a hardcover version with the understanding that only so many copies would be produced. These copies are signed by the two editors, Laurie R. King and Leslie Klinger, as well as contributors Jacqueline Winspear, Dana Stabenow, S.J. Rozan and Thomas Perry, all on the title page. So call this a 'first thus' and a very nice gift for the die hard mystery fan. $29.95 while they last!

 

Buckling to the Season

The Annual Display of Holiday Books is now Up and is Already Being Raided.

No Ending, Spoiled or Otherwise, in Sight as ‘The Mousetrap’ Begins Its 60th Year

By DAVE ITZKOFF, The New York Times

It might be the longest-standing spoiler alert in theater history: “The Mousetrap,” the London stage production of the Agatha Christie mystery that still asks its audience not to reveal the killer’s identity, began its 60th year on Friday and announced a tour of Britain among other special events to mark the murderous milestone.

“The Mousetrap,” which was first presented as a radio drama in 1947, made its West End debut at the Ambassadors Theater on Nov. 25, 1952, in a production that starred Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim, his wife, as Detective Sergeant Trotter and the innkeeper Mollie Ralston. It was there that Mr. Attenborough first made the speech urging audiences to keep the play’s secret. (A controversy ensued last year when the ending was posted on Wikipedia.)

In 1974 the play transferred to St. Martin’s Theater two days after its final performance at the Ambassadors, and has played 24,587 performances in what is treated as a continuous run.

Stephen Waley-Cohen, a current producer of “The Mousetrap,” told Reuters that a 60th-anniversary tour of the play would begin a 60-week run in September at the Marlowe Theater in Canterbury. A “Mousetrap” theater charity program will also introduce a mystery-writing series at 60 British schools and 60 productions of the play have been licensed for performances in other countries.

Though the play has long outlived its murder victims, Mr. Waley-Cohen told Reuters he believed there was still plenty of life left in “The Mousetrap.”

“I’m very conscious that although we’ve had good houses for 60 years,” he said, “the amount of people who’ve seen the show in London is about the same as a single show of ‘Downton Abbey’” – which has drawn about 10 million viewers an episode in Britain.

We'll be here tomorrow. Will you?

Just a few photos of the Huge Crowds already awaiting the beginning of our Great Black Friday Book Sale

WOW - we feel like rockstars!

We'll try to keep them calm and peaceful! But it's like a Big Party!

See you at 9am tomorrow!!

~the Crew

Have a Happy Thanksgiving and, for heaven's sake - stay out of the kitchen!

Of Plastic Bags, Books and Dogsh*t

The Seattle City Council is busy working to eliminate plastic shopping bags. While we agree that far too many of them do end up blowing around the streets and causing mayhem, they have their uses and we don't think those are being taken into account. We fired off this e-mail to Mike O'Brien, the lead councilman on this effort.

Mr. O'Brien - From the point of view of this small business, the proposed plastic bag ban is a fiasco. While I can agree that too many plastic bags end up as trash and clogging the environment, they have their place in the rainy Northwest, especially when it comes to books.

Seattle is known for being a great place for books - for readers and writers and for bookshops. Within the publishing world, Seattle has a great reputation for all of the above. Seattle is also a mecca for tourists and we're happy to say that many make a point of coming to visit us each time they come to town.

I don't think enough consideration is being given to those two factors - rain and books. In general, I would hope you'll agree that water and paper do not play well together. Books swell when they're wet, the pages ripple, the covers wrinkle and they become, in every way, less attractive. And what you want to do is remove the best way to protect books from the rain.

We do a great deal of business due to author signings. Again, Seattle has a golden reputation in the book world for the number of authors who are sent to town to promote their books. Collectors are astonishingly picky about the condition of their books. We take great care to provide them with pristine signed copies, yet you expect them to take them out in the rain protected only with a paper bag? Lunacy! Paper bags, like the books themselves, don't react well in the rain.

Here we turn back to the tourists that so many of us depend upon. While the locals may learn to carry reusable bags, tourists won't. I don't travel with reusable bags. Do you? You seriously want us to explain to customers from near and far, from Asia and Europe, that our city council thinks it is a good idea that their books get damaged in the rain, that we're not allowed to provide protection for their purchases and that, even worse, we're supposed to charge them for the bag we can provide?

What we want are people to come downtown to spend the day shopping and eating and enjoying themselves. That's the way we stay in business and you get sales tax. Instead, the city has spent the last 21 years that I've been down here making it harder and less pleasant to come downtown - traffic, construction, higher parking rates, now no shopping bags. Is it any wonder that people stay out of downtown and hit the malls? Plenty of free parking, no weather to contend with, they can fill their arms with bags, go dump them in the car and go back for more. We do have a half-dozen shopping bags in our trunk, but we don't go for a walk or get on the bus with those 6 bags. Easy enough to hit the mall, take in a couple of bags with you, head to the car when they're full and pick up a couple of empty ones. Doesn't work like that on the bus. Doesn't work like that for tourists. Alderwood and Southcenter and Bellevue Square must be licking their chops over the way you all continue to drive shoppers and diners out of downtown.

Of course the inevitable end of this is a ban on all plastic of any sort - no zip locks baggies for lunches, no produce bags and no newspaper bags. At that point, I hope you're follow me and my dog and pick up after her with your hand because there won't be any more plastic bags to use in order to follow the scoop laws.

In a way, the city council is like Congress. They spend their days talking about In God We Trust and restricting freedom of choice and you all spend your days working on eliminating plastic bags - all of you ignoring the most important thing: getting people back to work.

Your priorities are screwed up. We need shoppers. We need people with disposable income. And we need plastic bags to protect the books they buy to keep us in business and keep you all in sales taxes.

JB Dickey, owner

It's No Mystery!

Once again, the Seattle Mystery Bookshop has been a great supporter of my books! You guys rock! It's always an honor to drop by one of the gems of the Northwest literary scene!

St. Martin's Press has purchased two more novels from me, so you know I'll be back!

Thanks once again,

 

dana

Special offer from US and Random House

Between Friday, Nov 25th and Saturday, Dec 24, buy any two books from this list of 25 Random House mystery and crime trade paperbacks and get a third one on the list free!

We’ll have a list available in the shop, on the website or via e-mail, the books in a display for viewing here in the shop, as well as for sale through our website. If you’re giving one – or several! - as a gift and need to be sent to you or the recipient, order early to ensure they arrive in time as presents. In addition to the 25 that we normally stock, there are 130 other non-mysteries in the offer. You have until Dec 16th to order the mysteries so we can ensure they get there before Christmas; order the non-mysteries by Dec 14th for the same reason.

The sale starts Next Friday - but feel free to reserve copies before that.

The list (an * means the book is a Staff Pick):

Berendt, John - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, $15.00

Bradley, Alan - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie*, $15.00

                       A Red Herring Without Mustard*, $15.00

Brooks, Max - The Zombie Survival Guide, $13.95

Capote, Truman - In Cold Blood, $15.00

Cronin, Justin - The Passage*,  $16.00

Furst, Alan   - Spies of the Balkans, $15.00

Haddon, Mark - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, $14.95

Larson, Erik - The Devil in the White City*, $15.95

                   Isaac’s Storm* , $15.95

                   Thunderstruck*, $16.00

Lindsay, Jeff - Darkly Dreaming Dexter*, $14.95

                     Dearly Devoted Dexter*, $14.95

                     Dexter in the Dark*, $14.95

                     Dexter By Design*, $14.95

                     Dexter is Delicious*, $14.95

 McCarthy, Cormac - No Country for Old Men, $15.00

 Mankell, Henning - The Man from Beijing, $15.00

 Nesbo, Jo  - Headhunters*, $14.95

Pickard, Nancy  - The Scent of Rain and Lightning *, $15.00

Priest, Cherie - Hellbent*, $15.00

Smith, Alexander McCall - Charming Quirks of Others, $14.00

                                     The Double Comfort Safari Club, $14.00

Stevens, Taylor - The Informationist*,  $14.00

Unger, Lisa - Fragile*, $15.00