Death of a Bookseller - Alice Slater ****

By Brian Clegg

This was not the book I expected it to be – and I’m rather glad of it. It looks like a Christmas murder mystery, particularly in the red and gold cover I got. But it really isn’t. A murder is involved. The book climaxes at Christmas. But this nothing like a cosy murder investigation: it is an intense dip into the intersecting lives of two women, each with deep-seated problems.

Roach, obsessed with true crime is already a bookseller at the local Waterstones (sorry, Spines). Laura joins with a new management team. She’s apparently the opposite of Roach – blonde, bubbly, tote-bag-carrying, chatty with the customers… but has something dark hidden in her past. Roach desperately wants to get closer to Laura, in part because of the nature of Laura’s ‘found poetry’ – but instead finds herself pushed away (not entirely surprisingly).

The bookshop setting is one I was naturally drawn to, but I would never normally read a book that’s primarily about obsession and the fragmenting relationships of two people. Both women seem to get hammered practically every evening and after a while neither is easy to relate to. However, I was kept reading: it is a very cleverly written book, alternating between Roach and Laura’s viewpoints, in the first person. It’s relentlessly dark (in fact, there are two ‘cut scenes’ included at the end of the edition I bought, and I suspect they were edited out because they provided too much light relief) – but I had to keep turning the page all along.

The ending was unexpected, but not (as I expected it to be) shocking. I’m sure Alice Slater knows her subjects’ lifestyle better than I would and captures it well. The only real oddity that struck me is that perhaps Slater has never owned a pair of Doc Martens, as she makes a big thing of one of the characters wanting some DMs with yellow stitching. I’ve worn DMs for the last 40 years and hardly any didn’t have yellow stitching – although not always there, it’s very much a part of the trademark look, so it’s an odd thing to emphasise.

I have limited space, so a first decision after reading a book is whether to shelf it or re-sell it. This is a shelfer.

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.