The Bookman's Promise
A Cliff Janeway Novel
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4.4 • 22 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Cliff Janeway is back! The Bookman's Promise marks the eagerly awaited return of Denver bookman-author John Dunning and the award-winning crime novel series that helped to turn the nation on to first-edition book collecting.
First, it was Booked to Die, then The Bookman's Wake. Now John Dunning fans, old and new, will rejoice in The Bookman's Promise, a richly nuanced new Janeway novel that juxtaposes past and present as Denver ex-cop and bookman Cliff Janeway searches for a book and a killer.
The quest begins when an old woman, Josephine Gallant, learns that Janeway has recently bought at auction a signed first edition by the legendary nineteenth-century explorer Richard Francis Burton. The book is a true classic, telling of Burton's journey (disguised as a Muslim) to the forbidden holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The Boston auction house was a distinguished and trustworthy firm, but provenance is sometimes murky and Josephine says the book is rightfully hers.
She believes that her grandfather, who was living in Baltimore more than eighty years ago, had a fabulous collection of Burton material, including a handwritten journal allegedly detailing Burton's undercover trip deep into the troubled American South in 1860. Josephine remembers the books from her childhood, but everything mysteriously disappeared shortly after her grandfather's death.
With little time left in her own life, Josephine begs for Janeway's promise: he must find her grandfather's collection. It's a virtually impossible task, Janeway suspects, as the books will no doubt have been sold and separated over the years, but how can he say no to a dying woman?
It seems that her grandfather, Charlie Warren, traveled south with Burton in the spring of 1860, just before the Civil War began. Was Burton a spy for Britain? What happened during the three months in Burton's travels for which there are no records? How did Charlie acquire his unique collection of Burton books? What will the journal, if it exists, reveal?
When a friend is murdered, possibly because of a Burton book, Janeway knows he must find the answers. Someone today is willing to kill to keep the secrets of the past, and Janeway's search will lead him east: To Baltimore, to a Pulitzer Prize-winning author with a very stuffed shirt, and to a pair of unorthodox booksellers. It reaches a fiery conclusion at Fort Sumter off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina.
What's more, a young lawyer, Erin d'Angelo, and ex-librarian Koko Bujak, have their own reasons for wanting to find the journal. But can Janeway trust them?
Rich with the insider's information on rare and collectible books that has made John Dunning famous, and with meticulously researched detail about a mesmerizing figure who may have played an unrecognized role in our Civil War, The Bookman's Promise is riveting entertainment from an extraordinarily gifted author who is as unique and special as the books he so clearly loves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Nero Wolfe Award winner Dunning's third literate entry in his Cliff Janeway series (after Booked to Die and The Bookman's Wake), 90-ish Josephine Gallant persuades the former Denver cop turned antiquarian bookseller to try to recover a rare collection of the works of Richard Burton, "the explorer, not the actor," that once belonged to her grandfather, a faithful traveling companion of Burton. Eager to fulfill his pledge to Ms. Gallant, who expires soon after their meeting, Janeway begins an investigation that takes him to a seedy used bookshop and other strange haunts in Baltimore, where he runs into a shady writer and a gang of thugs who are obviously looking for the same literary treasures. Midway through the often rambling narrative, a flashback to 1860 steps up the pace when Burton undertakes a possible espionage mission to the South for the British prime minister and encounters Captain Abner Doubleday, who solicits his advice on the defense of Fort Sumter. Two well-intentioned women join Janeway for the final search through historic Charleston, with the inevitable romantic interludes. Too many extraneous characters and some tedious dialogue slow the action, but the book-collecting background is sure to appeal to a wide range of mystery readers. FYI:Dunning's last novel was Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime (2001), about old-time radio.
Customer Reviews
A nested doll of mysteries
The discovery and purchase of an old Richard F Burton book triggers a series of stories that become nested mysteries. The first mystery is who was Charles Warren. Burton inscribed the book he gifted to Warren. That happened in 1860 pre US Civil war. The book is purchased by Cliff Janeway a former homicide cop who has become a book dealer and collector of rare books. He is contacted by an elderly woman who turns out to be the grand daughter of Charles Warren. We learn that Warren had a nearly complete collection of Burton’s books. They were swindled away from his daughter’s husband by a pair of shady book dealers from Baltimore.
The elderly woman dies before Janeway can learn a lot more. Then he discovers she had been befriended by a younger woman when she was living in an elder care home. That woman had a series of tapes she had made of the elderly woman speaking under anesthesia. She reveals her grandfather’s story of traveling to Charleston and Fort Sumter before the war and suggests that advice given by Burton may have lead to the opening act of the Civil war. It turns out Burton kept a notebook and diary and Janeway goes first to Baltimore and then Charleston in search of that volume. The story of that search is one of the nested mysteries. Another mystery was triggered by the smothering of a woman who had befriended the elderly woman when she came to Denver to speak with Janeway. And their is the Pulitzer Prize winning friend of a Judge friend of Janeway who is somehow mixed up with Burton’s story and his books. In the end the mysteries are unraveled thanks to a few unexpected coincidences. There is a night spent camping at Fort Sumter that involves a confrontation with a thug from Baltimore and a romance between Janeway and a young woman protégée of the Judge’s.