Mystery, Inc.

By Joyce Carol Oates

A book lover’s lust for acquisition drives him to murder in this short tale from the New York Times–bestselling author of Beautiful Days.

Identified only by the hastily—and clumsily—chosen alias Charles Brockden, the narrator of this story finds a bookstore that instantly piques his desire. He must call it his own; he must add it to his already-extensive collection of bookstores. But surely the owner of such a fine shop wouldn’t easily part with it. Brockden forms a plan to acquire the store in such a way that no one would ever suspect foul play: untraceable murder. And he knows he will be successful—because he has done it before.

The Bibliomysteries are a series of short tales about deadly books, by top mystery authors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Apr 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504006958

Joyce Carol Oates

JOYCE CAROL OATES is the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the winner of the National Book Award. Among her major works are We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, and The Falls.

Book preview

I am very excited! For at last, after several false starts, I have chosen the perfect setting for my bibliomystery.

It is Mystery, Inc., a beautiful old bookstore in Seabrook, New Hampshire, a town of less than two thousand year-round residents overlooking the Atlantic Ocean between New Castle and Portsmouth.

For those of you who have never visited this legendary bookstore, one of the gems of New England, it is located in the historic High Street district of Seabrook, above the harbor, in a block of elegantly renovated brownstones originally built in 1888. Here are the offices of an architect, an attorney-at-law, a dental surgeon; here are shops and boutiques—leather goods, handcrafted silver jewelry, the Tartan Shop, Ralph Lauren, Esquire Bootery. At 19 High Street a weathered old sign in black and gilt creaks in the wind above the sidewalk:

MYSTERY, INC. BOOKSELLERS

New & Antiquarian Books,

Maps, Globes, Art

Since 1912

The front door, a dark-lacquered red, is not flush with the sidewalk but several steps above it; there is a broad stone stoop, and a black wrought iron railing. So that, as you stand on the sidewalk gazing at the display window, you must gaze upward.

Mystery, Inc. consists of four floors with bay windows on each floor that are dramatically illuminated when the store is open in the evening. On the first floor, books are displayed in the bay window with an (evident) eye for the attractiveness of their bindings: leatherbound editions of such 19th-century classics as Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone and The Woman in White, Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, A. Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as well as classic 20th-century mystery-crime fiction by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Cornell Woolrich, Ross Macdonald, and Patricia Highsmith and a scattering of popular American, British, and Scandinavian contemporaries. There is even a title of which I have never heard—The Case of the Unknown Woman: The Story of One of the Most Intriguing Murder Mysteries of the 19th Century, in what appears to be a decades-old binding.

As I step inside Mystery, Inc. I feel a pang of envy. But in the next instant this is supplanted by admiration—for envy is for small-minded persons.

The interior of Mystery, Inc. is even more beautiful than I had imagined. Walls are paneled in mahogany with built-in bookshelves floor to ceiling; the higher shelves are accessible by ladders on brass rollers, and the ladders are made of polished wood. The ceiling is comprised of squares of elegantly hammered tin; the floor is parquet, covered in small carpets. As I am a book collector myself—and a bookseller—I note how attractively books are displayed without seeming to overwhelm the customer; I see how cleverly books are positioned upright to intrigue the eye; the customer is made to feel welcome as in an old-fashioned library with leather chairs and sofas scattered casually about. Here and there against the walls are glass-fronted cabinets containing rare and first-edition books, no doubt under lock and key. I do feel a stab of envy, for of the mystery bookstores I own, in what I think of as my modest mystery-bookstore empire in New England, not one is of the class of Mystery, Inc., or anywhere near.

In addition, it is Mystery, Inc.’s online sales that present the gravest competition to a bookseller like myself, who so depends upon such sales …

Shrewdly I have timed my arrival at Mystery, Inc. for a half-hour before closing time, which is 7 P.M. on Thursdays, and hardly likely to be crowded. (I think there are only a few other customers—at least on the first floor, within my view.) In this wintry season dusk has begun as early as 5:30 PM. The air is wetly cold, so that the lenses of my glasses are covered with a fine film of steam; I am vigorously polishing them when a young woman salesclerk with tawny gold, shoulder-length hair approaches me to ask if I am looking for anything in particular, and I tell her that I am just browsing, thank you—Though I would like to meet the proprietor of this beautiful store, if he’s on the premises.

The courteous young woman tells me that her employer, Mr. Neuhaus, is in the store, but upstairs in his office; if I am interested in some of the special collections or antiquarian holdings, she can call him …

Thank you! I am interested indeed but just for now, I think I will look around.

What a peculiar custom

Reviews for Mystery, Inc.

[gpangel_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mystery Inc. by Joyce Carol Oates is a 2015 Mysterious Press/ Open Road Media publication. This book is part of the BiblioMysteries publications in which well known mystery authors submit short mysteries tales about Deadly books. In New Hampshire a bookstore anyone would covet has become an obsession for one man, who is determined to have it, by any means necessary.While the story is quite short, and it won't take the reader very long to determine the way of things, I found this sinister little tale quite entertaining. Trying to imagine the possibility of owning such rare and antiquated books, is mind boggling. If such gems do exist, behind glass, or locked in a safe somewhere, the very idea of it is enough to overwhelm the senses of any die hard mystery fan.The descriptions of the store and the supposed collections the owner has acquired over time was what kept my imagination in high gear. The mystery itself wasn't really much of a mystery though, and ended up being rather predictable. However, the writing was, as always, superb, except that I am puzzling over the use of the first person narrative in this particular case. All the same, it's always a pleasure to read anything by Joyce Carol Oates. 4 stars

[kevn57-163679 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While the finale came to me long before the final pages the story was so well executed I didn't care. Very short novella well worth your time

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A disguised man waits until the end of store hours to visit Mystery, Inc., a popular specialty bookstore in a New Hampshire seaside town. He knows that the owner will send the employees home while he himself helps a serious collector willing to spend a lot and ask many questions. The disguised man's purpose for the visit is as evil as can be. He is a bookstore-buying serial killer. He goes into a book store he wants to buy, but instead of making an offer to the owners, he murders them in a way that looks like a natural death, then lowballs the grieving family and acquires the store and its stock.But Mystery, Inc. is special. Not only is it a beautiful store full of valuable first editions by Dickens, Christie and Doyle, but the owner is exactly the sort of man the killer would like to be himself, content in his work and happily married. Unaware that the customer who keeps adding books to his tab is actually planning on killing him and stealing the rare books, the friendly owner begins telling the story of his haunted bookstore.Number 21 in The Mysterious Bookshop's Bibliomysteries.

[lostinalibrary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Charles Brockden (not his real name) is the owner of several bookstores dedicated to the mystery novel. He has acquired these stores through unconventional but perhaps fitting means. Now he has found a new store that he just has to have. Unfortunately, the present owner isn’t ready to give it up but, then, Charles was never one to take no for an answer.I’m not usually a fan of the short story – unless it’s really well-done, it always seems at least to me that there’s just too much missing for me to feel satisfied after finishing one. But Mystery, Inc. is Joyce Carol Oates’ entry in the Bibliomysteries series for Mysteriouspress and her typical clean, precise language makes it a complete and fully self-contained tale examining the inner workings of the obsessive mind and the lengths it will go to obtain the object of its obsession. There is even a touch of the macabre to ramp up the creep factor. The story, to be sure, is predictable in the way that, say, Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado is predictable – there is no doubt that we, the reader, know long before the main character what is going to happen – but this foreshadowing just makes the tale that much more chilling. Mystery, Inc. is both a satisfactory murder mystery and an homage to the murder mystery from Poe to Chandler and to the bookstores dedicated to them. The pace is more like a slow-acting poison than a quick thrust to the heart with a sharp knife but that just serves to give the goose bumps more time to rise.

[cuentosalgernon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Although I’m not a great fan of mystery novels, I decided to read this book because I usually enjoy short fiction better than long novels, I love stories about books and bookshops, and because I thought that a mystery story written by Joyce Carol Oates wouldn’t be the typical one. And I wasn’t disappointed at all. "Mystery, Inc." is a very short book (less than 50 pages) that can be read in one seating but that I found highly enjoyable and well-written. A wonderful tribute to the old style mystery novels and writers like Poe , Wilkie Collins or Doyle. And even if this is not one of the highlights in Oates’ career, I would definitely recommended it, maybe not to those who love complex, long and deep mystery novels, but to anyone looking for a light, entertaining and clever story.

[brandiec-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mystery, Inc. is a delightful tale about a specialty bookshop owner who has made a habit of acquiring competing stores, not by purchasing them, but by murdering their owners and then buying the stores at bargain basement prices from the grieving heirs. As the title suggests, the bookshops at issue specialize in mysteries, and our villain, though an enthusiast of the genre, has not read enough of his own stock. Not surprisingly, his scheme does not work out quite the way he planned when he comes up against Aaron Neuhaus, the proprietor of Mystery, Inc. What is even more satisfying than the resolution of our narrator's encounter with Mr. Neuhaus, however, is the store's gruesome history and the ambiguity of Mr. Neuhaus's own acquisition of it. As Mr. Neuhaus says,"If you are an aficionado of mystery-detective-crime fiction, you know that someone, in fact many people, and many of them ‘innocent,’ must die for the sake of the art — for mystery’s sake. That is the bedrock of our business: Mystery, Inc. Some of us are booksellers, and some of us are consumers, or are consumed. But all of us have our place in the noble trade."I received a free copy of Mystery, Inc. through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.