I’ve been a fan of Andrew Cartmel’s Vinyl Detective series for years (you can read my reviews here, here, here, here, here, and here). The Vinyl Detective hunts down rare and expensive vinyl records and solves crimes along the way. In the new Death in Fine Condition, Cartmel introduces a new character, Cordelia, who loves vintage paperbacks. Cordelia searches for rare paperbacks in charity shops, thrift stores, and jumble sales in suburban London looking for treasure.
And, Cordelia finds it: a complete collection of rare and valuable Sleuth Hounds. But, somebody else owns them. So Cordelia steals them!
Cordelia, The Paperback Sleuth, gives the reader a whole different sensibility as to what a paperback addict will do or say. Of course, a couple of deaths complicate things and Cartmel mixes in some surprises to accelerate the action. If you love paperback books and wacky crime novels, you’ll love Death in Fine Condition! I sure did! Perfect Summer reading! GRADE: A
This will strike a chord loud and lovely with some former DAPA-EMers!
Dan, I was thinking the same thing! Bill Crider would have loved DEATH IN FINE CONDITION!
I’ve been rereading some of the mass market paperbacks I bought in high school and feeling very nostalgic for the form. If you grew up in middle America a book store primarily and sometimes exclusively carried paperbacks. I only recall seeing hardcovers in the book departments of the department stores (remember those?) and at the entrance of the chain book stores that started popping up in the malls in the seventies.
I just read that vinyl sales were up a staggering 24 percent last year and CDs were up an even more incredible (relatively) 4 percent. Apparently the increase is being driven by young people who crave a physical connection with music. I’d like to fantasize that the kids will someday discover the paperback but given how their taste is so contemporary in tone and ideology I don’t see 20th century fare, even fantasy, catching on.
I’ve seen the Vinyl Detective books but never picked one up. This looks a little more appealing.
Byron, I can relate to your nostalgia for paperbacks you bought in High School. Just by chance, I’m reading a paperback that was published in 1944! And, I listen to a music CD (or two!) every day. I’m not a vinyl guy, but I can appreciate the passion collectors have for vinyl albums. That’s exactly what fuels the searches in the Vinyl Detective series!
When I grew up in the late ’50s and ’60s, my West Va hometown was too small to have any commercial businesses besides a gas station, a beer joint, and a small grocery with a pool table and a few comic books,, but the next town over had a drug store with a spinner rack, and the larger one beyond had two drug stores, a lunch counter, and a GC Murphy’s with racks. Charleston, WV, twenty miles away, had a Woolworth’s with a rack, two bookstores, and two newsstands, including the wonderful Arcade. A downtown anchor department store had a book section, but mostly hardcovers like Byron’s. All are long gone, and even the towns are economically devastated ghosts of their former selves. Like Byron, I don’t see pb’s making a comeback among kids. Reprints of the old stuff seem to be the exclusive domain of Hard Case and Stark House. I daresay their readership consists mostly of old timers like me, and maybe a few stray hipsters.
Fred, I totally agree with you. Young people are interested in other kinds of fiction, not private eyes or Westerns, or spy novels. And, many prefer e-books, not paperbacks or hardcovers. Many of our used bookstores didn’t make it through the Pandemic. The few remaining bookstores are just hanging on. The book selling market has gone online mostly. But I still have fond thoughts of those spinner racks!
It’s been a while since I read one of his Vinyl Detective books, so glad to see a paperback series.
Jeff, you would recognize many of the British paperbacks Catrmel has Cordelia deal with.
I had forgotten that you could only find hardbacks in department store book departments. Of course, I only read books from the library until the seventies when Walden Books and B, Dalton turned up in malls. I think wealthier communities might have had book stores but not my neighborhood in Philly. I did not own any book when I got married in 1967 at age 19. Phil brought along his college books and that was our library.
Patti, I was buying comic books at an early age. I was also reading the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Tom Swift, Jr. books in Third Grade. By the time I was 10 or 11, I was buying paperbacks with the money I made from mowing lawns. And, of course, I kept most of what I bought!
Patti, when we first started going to London in the early 1970s, we went to the book departments in Harrods and Selfridges, as well as real bookstores like Foyle’s (which had a very confusing layout – paperbacks weren’t laid out by genre, but by publisher! and Hatchard’s.
You’ve featured Cartmel before and I failed to checked my library. Today I did and found that they have this one on order and not much else. So I’ll give this a try. The three others they have appear to be in a series called Rivers of London. How are those?
Michael,Rivers of London is the first novel in the Peter Grant series by English author Ben Aaronovitch. I like those books, too: http://georgekelley.org/rivers-of-london-by-ben-aaronovitch/
Don’t forget me! I’m a veteran of many Lancecons and I was buying paperbacks from the years 1939 to 1959 by the armload! Newer ones, too! I still have most of them but will entertain offers! Mapbacks, anyone?
Bob, I’m sure you’ve seen the prices for paperbacks moving upward. Art Scott has sold a bunch for impressive amounts of cash!
George, I’m thinking of selling my SF-collection, mainly older paperbacks and magazines, because none of the younger family members in interested in them.
Where do you think should I look, start asking for offers?
Of course there’s the little problem that those about 10 000 books are in Germany …
Wolf, if you can find a Science Fiction bookstore, that might be the place to start.
George, that’s my problem:
We don’t have them in Germany and the one I visited regularly in London for many years fantasy Centre) closed down.
And the Forbidden Planet switched to selling games and toys etc …
Wolf, your other alternative is to sell your books online. I donated my books to a university and took the tax write-off.
I have to find this one. While growing up in northern Manitoba, the only books for sale in our town were paperbacks in the drugstores and tobacco shop where my Father bought his and I found my sports magazines. I started reading my father’s copies of Erle Stanley Gardner, George Harmon Coxe and Brett Halliday and still have a few. Over the years I have been lucky enough to come across several collections of old paperbacks. Unfortunately, I lost quite a few a couple of years ago due to a water leak in my basement. I added to my Father’s Mike Shayne books and now have every one and I have every John D. McDonald except for one. Every time I go to our cottage on Lake Winnipeg, I check out yard sales and a couple of thrift shops for old PBs, but the pickings have been slim tha past few years. I’ve been very lucky out there twice and always hope that collections that have been sitting in family cottages will show up probably when there are new owners.
Kent, you’ll love DEATH IN FINE CONDITION. Like you, I got into paperbacks at a young age and still love them. Sadly, when large paperback collections show up for sale, I’m sure it’s because the owner died.