Sales! Sale! Sale!
Fridays and Saturdays in Feb, Fran and Amber will be allowing you to Roll the Dice Discount to get a discount on your entire cost of books. Possible discounts range from 1% to 20% (these are special dice you see). The discount does not apply to sales tax or to shipping. Come on in and try your luck!
Last Weekend!!
Because we’re such sweethearts, we’re having a sale on all of our books listed on Biblio.com 20% off on all books $20 and over! Sale starts Sat, Feb 7th and ends Sat, Feb 21st, with Valentine’s Day smack in the center of it. Be Aware – this is valid only through Biblio.com and the sale is not applicable for sales in the shop.
AND, the last weekend for the Blind Date With A Book – that perfect date that will surprise and (we hope!) delight you, and there are no calories involved! There are still some great book bags available. A $10 reduction in our inventory on the shelves gets you one of these great surprises, so come on in and get yours!
Used Books In!
Another week of used books – big runs of John Dickson Carr (and some Dickson Carter, Brett Halliday, Leslie Ford, Mignon Eberhardt, Alistair MacLean, Sax Rohmer, Frank Kane and Mickey Spillane paperbacks. Lots and lots of great pulp covers throughout all of these runs (Aarons and Prather, etc.) Let us know if you’re looking for something. Maybe we have it!
Rest In Peace:
Louis Jourdan, the embodiment of suave, died on Feb. 15 at his home in LA. Born Louis Gendre in Marseilles in 1921, he changed his name to Jourdan. His father owned a hotel in Cannes and the young Jourdan became enamoured with actors and through their visits and they in turn encouraged him to pursue his interests.
His early acting career was halted by WWII. Refusing to appear in pro-Nazi propaganda, he instead quit acting to join the Resistance. After the War, he moved to LA and began a long film career, even joking that he was Hollywood’s “French cliché”. His first role in the US was in Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case in 1947 with Gregory Peck, and in ’56 he played opposite Doris Day in Julie as her homicidally jealous husband. He starred with most of the big names of Hollywood in the 1950s.
Jourdan is most fondly remembered for his roles in Gigi and Can-Can. His career stretched for 50 years. He did quite a lot of TV work, appearing on “Vegu$”, “The F.B.I.”, “Charlie’s Angels”, “The Name of the Game”, and was the target of investigation on “Columbo”. In the mid-50s, he starred as Parisian cop Insp. Beaumont on the American TV series “Paris Precinct”. And we remember him, of course, for playing the villain Kamal in the 1983 Bond film Octopussy – which puts him into a small but distinguished club of actors and actresses.
R.I.P. and adieu.
Gift Certificates:
They’re available in Whatever Denomination You Want; They Don’t Expire; You can Order Them by Phone, e-mail or through the Website, and we can Mail them directly to the Recipient if you’d like. Perfect for all sorts of occasions.
Links of Interest:
From NPR a story about collectable books – not mysteries – but still interesting to those of us who love books: Princeton Gifted Rare Books Valued at $300 Million
Here’s an interesting profile/interview/travelogue with crime writer Richard Price about his new book, The Whites, and his childhoon haunts in The Bronx.
While we specialize in mystery and crime books, we can order virtually any new book that you might want, no matter what its topic.
New Signings (with authors who will be visiting the shop):
Tuesday March 17th at Noon - Valentina Giambanco stops by to sign The Gift of the Darkness (Nov., Quercus hc, $26.99). A family of four is found murdered in their Seattle home, the words “thirteen days” scratched in the doorframe. That day, a partner in the dead man’s law firm receives a note in the mail that says just those two words. The two cops assigned to the case discover that the dead lawyer, the brother of the lawyer who received the card in the mail and the murderer suspected of the crimes, grew up together and were all abducted and held hostage on the Olympic Peninsula. Only the two boys who grew up to be lawyers were rescued. The third vanished without a trace. Is he back for vengeance? Debut that was a bestseller in Europe – Ms. Giambanco lives in England and makes her visit to the US to sign copies- now released in the US. Adele highly recommends.
Wednesday May 27th at 12:30 - Ace Atkins signs Kickback (Putnam hc, $26.95). Spenser is hired to look into a judge’s harsh sentencing of teens. He and Hawk follow the trail that appears to lead into corruption within the for-profit prison system. 4th in the continued series.
See the calendar of all currently-scheduled events on our website. The website calendar contains plot synopses. At the bottom of it is the updated, complete list of signed copies that we’ll be getting from other sources. Click Here.
Cara Black, Mar 2
Glen Erik Hamilton, Mar 3
C.S. Harris, Mar 7
Leslie Budewitz, Mar 10
Timothy Williams, Mar 18
Jacqueline Winspear, Mar 24
J.A. Jance, Mar 27
Mary Daheim, April 11
Kate Dyer-Seeley, April 18
And there are always more on the way!
Remember, too, that while it is always fun to come in and meet the author in person, that isn’t always possible. So reserve a signed copy to be mailed to you or for you to pick up later. Those who reserve in advance get the copies in the best condition!
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Wish List:
Our website has a Wish List capability. If folks want to know what you’d like for a given holiday or birthday, it is easy to point people to our website. Amber has put together a dandy blog post explaining it and how it works.
Word of the Week:
connive (v.) C.1600, from Latin connivere, also conivere "to wink," hence, "to wink at (a crime), be secretly privy," from com- "together" (see com-) + base akin to nictare "to wink," from Proto-Indo-European root *kneigwh- (see nictitate). Related: Connived; conniving. (thanks to etymonline.com)
You can browse our collectable and hard-to-find books, as well as signed copies from earlier author events, on Biblio.com. You do not have to place an order through them, especially if you’re a long-time customer and we have your ordering info. Just email us to order.
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What We’ve Been Reading:
JB Recommends:
The publicity material says “Glen Erik Hamilton is a Seattle native, who lived aboard a sailboat as a boy, and grew up finding trouble around the marinas and commercial docks and islands of the Pacific Northwest.”
Hamilton puts his youthful experiences to good use in his debut thriller, Past Crimes (Morrow hc, 26.99 – signing Tues, Mar 3, noon). He’s created a main character who had a similar youth, Van Shaw, who grew up under the rough and criminal tutelage of his grandfather, the respected but feared Dono Shaw. Van knew the tricks of heists, scams and crimes large and small but at the end of high school, he broke with Dono and ran away to join the army. Now an Army Ranger, Van has added a new raft of talents to his arsenal but believes he’s left his past in Seattle well behind him.
Then he receives a cryptic message from Dono, the first communication between them in years and sent in a way that lets Van know he is needed back in Seattle. So home he goes.
That’s all I can say about the plot. Once he arrvies at Dono’s Capitol Hill house, everything changes and the story shoots off, rarely slowing down. Van has to use his various skills to try to stay ahead of the curve and to find out what has happened to drive Dono to call him home. While he does not want to fall back on his larcenous abilities, sometimes they’re what gets the job done, and Van’s desire to stay on one side of the law is continually tested.
Seattle is a character in the story – the streets and bars and one hair-raising section on the shore of an island in the Sound. Hamilton uses it all extremely well, the sounds and views and salty characters of the Shaw’s friends. No one is all black or white, no one is a stock character or made of thin cardboard. This is a solid, well constructed debut.
Like the best stories, you’re not given all the details of what went on or is going on. You don’t know exactly what drove Van and Dono apart, you don’t know what was strong enough to split them and to cause Van to abandon his entire life and to not look back – but you sense, as the story unfolds, that it had to have been something massive. Nothing in the lives of the Shaws was sedate or ordinary, and, in that, you know you’re in for some revelations.
Here’s hoping Hamilton has other Northwest thrillers in him, whether with Van Shaw or not. But if it is to be a series, this is a great start. Can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
We have two Tumblr blogs, in addition to our regular shop blog:
Hardboiled, maintained by JB – pulp covers, film noir and other images of crime and mystery, and
Reviews and Events – just what it sounds like!
On This Date:
Feb 22, 1896 – British writer Peter Cheney was born. He was one of the first European authors to adapt the American hard-boiled style to stories on that side of the Atlantic
Feb 22, 1925 – Edward Gorey – cartoonist extraordinaire – was born in Chicago
Feb 22, 1930 – Edward D. Hoch – one of the most prolific short story writers of all time – was born in Rochester, NY
Feb 22, 1933 - journalist, producer, author and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi was born in NYC
Feb 22 – from Hollywood: Jonathan Demme (1944 Baldwin NY), John Ashton (1948 Springfield, MA), Drew Barrymore (1975 Culver City, CA)
Feb 22, 1947 – Richard North Patterson was born in Berkeley, CA. His debut novel, The Lasko Tangent won the 1980 Edgar Award for Best First Novel
Feb 22, 1956 – Chandlerian writer Philip Kerr was born in Edinburgh
Feb 23, 1820 – the Cato Street Conspiracy arrests: the plot to murder the British cabinet and the Prime Minister was thwarted
Feb 23, 1937 - 7th of the dozen victims credited to the Cleveland Torso Murderer was found. She would never be identified
Feb 23, 1944 – John Sandford was born as John Camp in Cedar Rapids, IA
Feb 23, 1955 – Dashiell Hammett testifies before the Supreme Court during the Red Scare
Feb 23, 1966 – Harper with Paul Newman premiered. It is an adaptation of the 1st Lew Archer mystery by Ross Macdonald, The Moving Target. It is reported that due to a string of hit movies whose titles started with ‘H’, Newman has the name of the private eye changed from Archer to Harper
Feb 23, 1971 – TV show about a blind insurance investigator, “Longstreet”, premiered
Feb 24, 1848 – birth of Canadian Grant Allen, the first author to create a lead character who had a bad guy as the protagonist
Feb 24, 1909 – August Derleth – publisher of Arkham House books and writer of Holmes pastiches – was born in Sauk City, WI
Feb 24 – Abe Vigoda (1921, Sal Tessio in The Godfather and Fish in “Barney Miller”), Al Lettieri (1928, The Godfather and The Getaway), and Dominic Chianese (1931, Johnny Ola in TheGodfather II and Junior on “The Sopranos”) were all born in NYC
Feb 24, 1922 – Solomon Drakovsky was born in Seattle. On TV, he uses the name Steven Hill, and was Dan Briggs, the original leader of the IMF team, and DA Adam Schiff on “Law and Order”
Feb 24, 1929 - Ralph McInerny was born in Minneapolis
Feb 24, 1932 – John Vernon was born Adolphus Raymondus Vernon Agopsowicz in Saskatchewan. We’ll remember him not as Dean Wormer but for his many crime films, including Point Blank and Dirty Harry
Feb 25, 1913 – German actor Gert Fröbe was born. We remember him for his role of Auric Goldfinger. We should also remember him for leaving the Nazi party in 1937 and hiding two Jews during the war
Feb 25, 1921 – British police procedural writer John Wainwright was born in Leeds
Feb 25, 1922 – Henri Landru – known as ‘the French Bluebeard’ – was executed by guillotine
Feb 25, 1937 – espionage writer Joseph Hone was born in London
Feb 25, 1940 – Monica Proietti was born in Montreal and robbed banks and gained the folk hero name “Machine Gun Molly” (Monica la Mitraille)
Feb 25, 1957 – “Bugs” Moran, once a mob force in Chicago, died in Leavenworth of lung cancer
Feb 25, 2005 – largest diamond robbery in history: thieves stole €75 million in sparklers from Schipol’s cargo terminal
Feb 26, 1802 – Victor Hugo was born in Besançon. Les Misérables was published in 1862
Feb 26, 1884 – Hugh Wiley was born in Zanesville, OH. He later creates Mr. Wong who solves crimes from his curio-filled Chinatown home. Boris Karloff will portray Mr. Wong on screen
Feb 28, 1886 – pulp illustrator H.C. Murphy was born in Brooklyn
Feb 26 - Jack Ritchie was born (1922, Milwaukee), Sharyn McCrumb – future Edgar winner – was born (1948, Willmington, NC), Elizabeth George was born (1949, Warren, OH) and Pari Noskin Taichert was born
Feb 26, 1943 – actor and director Bill Duke was born in Poughkeepsie
Feb 26, 1993 – first bombing of the World Trade Center
Feb 27, 1910 – births of film noir femme fatale Joan Bennett (1910 Palisades Park, NJ) and Barbara Babcock (1937 Fort Riley, KS)
Feb 28, 1910 – pulp illustrator John Falter was born in Plattsmouth, NE
Feb 27, 19?? – one of our favorite authors and lunatics, Joshilyn Jackson was born Happy Early Birthday, Peach!
And Have a Relaxing and Book-Filled
