Bookscout
By John Dunning
4/5
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About this ebook
Six days a week, Joel Beer hunts for books in Denver. He stalks them in bookstores and thrift stores, at yard sales and estate sales, his eyes scanning spines quickly and ruthlessly, searching for the $0.25 gem that he can resell for $250. If he were the only scout in town, he might be able to make a living, but there are close to a dozen full-timers now—including his archrival, Popeye Lamonica—and Joel is having trouble paying his rent. Facing eviction, Joel and his partner—a slow-witted vagrant named Lacy—go on the hunt. They are about to give up when they find an estate sale offering a $0.50 copy of Walter Behr’s Something for Nothing that is worth $500. But Popeye sees it, too. To make this treasure his, Joel will do whatever it takes—even if it means sacrificing his career.
John Dunning
John Dunning (1942–2023) revealed book collecting’s most shocking secrets in his bestselling series of crime novels featuring Cliff Janeway: Booked to Die, which won the prestigious Nero Wolfe Award; The Bookman’s Wake, a New York Times Notable Book; and the New York Times bestsellers The Bookman’s Promise, The Sign of the Book, and The Bookwoman’s Last Fling. He also wrote the Edgar Award–nominated Deadline, The Holland Suggestions, and Two O’Clock, Eastern Wartime. An expert on rare and collectible books, he owned the Old Algonquin Bookstore in Denver for many years.
Read more from John Dunning
The Bookwoman's Last Fling: A Cliff Janeway Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Booked to Die Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bookman's Promise: A Cliff Janeway Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Deadline Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Bookman's Wake Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Denver: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sign of the Book: A Cliff Janeway "Bookman" Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Holland Suggestions Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Looking for Ginger North Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Bookscout
15 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I have to admit that I read this short story about a man who spends six days a week hunting for books in Denver simply because I miss John Dunning's books. A lot of the things I learned about the value of first editions, etc., I learned from reading Dunning's superb Cliff Janeway mysteries, and if you haven't read them, I do hope you'll give them a try. (The first one is Booked to Die.) Joel Beer could make a good living as a bookscout if he were the only one in Denver, but he's not. He's got stiff competition, especially from Popeye Lamonica. But when Joel and his partner Lacy-- a slow-witted vagrant-- are facing eviction, Joel is determined to find that elusive book that will pay all the bills and set them up.What happens is all about truth, the human spirit, and the magic of books. As a rule, I am not a re-reader, but I may have to make an exception for John Dunning. The man is Good.
Book preview
Bookscout - John Dunning
Introduction
I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED a good short story. A story offers a concentrated moment of truth that’s difficult to achieve in the sprawling expanse of a novel. Here, in a space of 5,000 words, the hero is put to a test and in this his entire life is revealed. Writer and reader join in a brief dream, and if the final vision is slightly different for each reader, this underscores the art, heightens rather than undercuts it.
As everyone knows, short fiction has been a casualty of the times. It’s true that stories are still being written. Anthologies, though they are usually the first candidates for the remainder tables at the year-end clearout of publishers’ warehouses, are still being published. But the days are long gone when the story was a prime-time magazine entertainment. Magazines today are like flytraps for such momentous nonfiction
topics as breast enlargement, bedroom aerobatics and celebrity profiles. That each of these articles is a clone of all the others seems not to matter much: the magazines thrive (at least those with the biggest boobs and the very best fourposter foreplay seem to do okay), and the short story goes the way of all good things.
C’est la freaking guerre.
I learned to write by reading short fiction, notably the stories of Ernest Hemingway and Irwin Shaw. I have always considered Shaw an underrated master: Such tales as Sailor off the Bremen and Act of Faith seemed to me then (and still do) to be beautifully conceived and realized. Shaw is still one of my cornerstones, one who led the way into the land of consonants and vowels and demonstrated how well short work can be done. He wrote some great novels too, his sniveling critics be damned. I think his best book is The Troubled Air, a gripping narrative of the radio business in the shadow of McCarthyism. Sadly, it is seldom read today, and if teachers and critics ever mention his name it’s his short work they recommend. Even the critics have to admit that Shaw wrote superb stories.
The magazines of the forties were sometimes described as a training ground for