Death of a Bookseller is a great example of classic British mystery fiction. The protagonist is a dutiful, honest, and kind police officer, Sergeant Wigan. He strikes up a friendship with a bookseller who introduces him to the art of collecting books. Wigan is enthusiastic and their friendship blooms until cut short when his friend is murdered. Wigan is seconded to the investigation which was led by one of those people who jumps to a conclusion and then assembles the evidence. He succeeds in winning the conviction of an unpleasant man who Wigan believes is innocent.

On his own time and at his own expense, Wigan looks for the real murderer, meeting people from every strata of the book collecting world from rich collectors who think nothing of making a transcontinental flight to track down a book to lowly and impoverished runners who scrounge estate sales and rummage bins. There are quite a few colorful characters and Wigan soon learns that bookselling is a cutthroat business, far less genteel than it may seem on the surface.

Death of a Bookseller is unlikely to keep you up reading through the night. It is a mental puzzle rather than a breakneck thriller. The imminent execution looms larger in Wigan’s mind than in the readers. The tension and the time crunch would be more powerful in a film than in Wigan’s painstaking investigation. I do have one complaint, though, the most likable people get killed. I mourned the victim of the last murder in the book and wish he could have just been unconscious or something, anything but profligately killed off by a cruel author.

I received an e-galley of Death of a Bookseller from the publisher through NetGalley.