PortadaGruposCharlasMásPanorama actual
Buscar en el sitio
Este sitio utiliza cookies para ofrecer nuestros servicios, mejorar el rendimiento, análisis y (si no estás registrado) publicidad. Al usar LibraryThing reconoces que has leído y comprendido nuestros términos de servicio y política de privacidad. El uso del sitio y de los servicios está sujeto a estas políticas y términos.

Resultados de Google Books

Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.

Cargando...

Booked Twice: Booked to Die and The Bookman's Wake

por John Dunning

Series: Cliff Janeway (omnibus 1-2)

MiembrosReseñasPopularidadValoración promediaMenciones
972277,725 (3.89)2
From Booked to Die: Chapter One The phone rang. It was 2:30 A.M. Normally I am a light sleeper, but that night I was down among the dead. I had just finished a thirteen-hour shift, my fourth day running of heavy overtime, and I hadn''t been sleeping well until tonight. A guy named Jackie Newton was haunting my dreams. He was my enemy and I thought that someday I would probably have to kill him. When the bell went off, I was dreaming about Jackie Newton and our final showdown. For some reason -- logic is never the strong point of a dream like that -- Jackie and I were in the hallway at East High School. The bell brought the kids out for the change of classes; Jackie started shooting and the kids began to drop, and that bell kept ringing as if it couldn''t stop. In the bed beside me, Carol stirred. "Oh, Cliff," she groaned. "Would somebody please get that goddamn telephone?" I groped for the night table, felt the phone, and knocked the damn thing to the floor. From some distant galaxy I could hear the midget voice of Neal Hennessey, saying, "Cliff'...Cliff'...Hey, Clifford!" I reached along the black floor and found the phone, but it was still many seconds later before Hennessey took on his bearlike image in my mind. "Looks like we got another one," Hennessey said without preamble. I struggled to sit up, trying to get used to the idea that Jackie Newton hadn''t shot me after all. "Hey, Cliffie...you alive yet?" "Yeah, Neal, sure. First time I been sound asleep in a week." He didn''t apologize; he just waited. "Where you at?" I said. "Alley off Fifteenth, just up from the Denver Post. This one looks an awful lot like the others." "Give me about half an hour." "We''ll be here." I sat for another minute, then I got up and went into the bathroom. I turned on the light and looked in the mirror and got the first terrifying look at myself in the cold hard light of the new day. You''re getting old, Janeway, I thought. Old Andrew Wyeth could make a masterpiece out of a face like that. Call it Clifford Liberty Janeway at thirty-six, with no blemish eliminated and no character line unexplored. I splashed cold water on my face: it had a great deal less character after that. To finally answer Hennessey, yes, I was almost alive again. The vision of Jackie Newton rose up before me and my hand went automatically to the white splash of scar tissue just under my right shoulder. A bank robber had shot me there five years ago. I knew Jackie Newton would give a lot to put in another one, about three inches to the left and an inch or so down. Man with an old bullet wound, by Wyeth: an atypical work, definitely not your garden-variety Helga picture. When I came out of the bathroom Carol was up. She had boiled water and had a cup of instant coffee steaming on my nightstand. "What now?" she said. As I struggled into my clothes, I told her it looked like another derelict murder. She sighed loudly and sat on the bed. She was lovely even in a semistupor. She had long auburn hair and could probably double for Helga in a pinch. No one but Wyeth would know. "Would you like me to come with you?" I gave a little laugh, blowing the steam from my coffee. "Call it moral support," she said. "Just for the ride down and back. Nobody needs to see me. I could stay in the car." "Somebody would see you, all right, and then the tongues would start. It''d be all over the department by tomorrow." "You know something? I don''t even care." "I care. What we do in our own time is nobody''s business." I went to the closet and opened it. Our clothes hung there side by side -- the blue uniform Carol had worn on yesterday''s shift; my dark sport coat; our guns, which had become as much a part of the wardrobe as pants, shirts, ties, badges. I never went anywhere without mine, not even to the corner store. I had had a long career for a guy thirty-six: I''d made my share of enemies, and Jackie Newton was only the latest. I put the gun on under my coat. I didn''t wear a tie, wasn''t about to at that time of night. I was off duty and I''d just been roused from a sound sleep; I wasn''t running for city council, and I hated neckties. "I know you''ve been saying that for a long time now, that stuff about privacy," Carol said dreamily. "But I think the real reason is, if people know about me, I make you vulnerable." I didn''t want to get into it. It was just too early for a philosophical discourse. There was something in what Carol said, but something in what I said too. I''ve never liked office gossip, and I didn''t want people talking about her and me. But Carol had been looking at it from another angle lately. We had been seeing each other, in the polite vernacular, for a year now, and she was starting to want something more permanent. Maybe bringing our arrangement into the public eye would show me how little there was to worry about. People did it all the time. For most of them the world didn''t come to an end. Occasionally something good came out of it. So she thought. "I''m going back to bed," she said. "Wake me when you come in. Maybe I''ll have a nice surprise for you." She lay back and closed her eyes. Her hair made a spectacular sunburst on the pillow. I sat for a while longer, sipping my coffee. There wasn''t any hurry: a crime lab can take three hours at the scene. I''d leave in five minutes and still be well within the half hour I''d promised Hennessey. The trouble is, when I have dead time -- even five minutes unfilled in the middle of the night -- I begin to think. I think about Carol and me and all the days to come. I think about the job and all the burned-out gone-forever days behind us. I think about quitting and I wonder what I''d do. I think about being tied to someone and anchoring those ties with children. Carol would not be a bad one to do that with. She''s pretty and bright, and maybe this is what love is. She''s good company: her interests broaden almost every day. She reads three books to my one, and I read a lot. We talk far into the night. She still doesn''t understand the first edition game: Hemingway, she says, reads just as well in a two-bit paperback as he does in a $500 first printing. I can still hear myself lecturing her the first time she said that. Only a fool would read a first edition. Simply having such a book makes life in general and Hemingway in particular go better when you do break out the reading copies. I listened to myself and thought, This woman must think I''m a government-inspected horse''s ass. Then I showed her my Faulkners, one with a signature, and I saw her shiver with an almost sexual pleasure as she touched the paper where he''d signed it. Faulkner was her most recent god, and I had managed to put together a small but respectable collection of his first editions. You''ve got to read this stuff, she said to me when she was a month deep in his work. How can you collect the man without ever reading what he''s written? In fact, I had read him, years ago: I never could get the viewpoints straight in The Sound and the Fury, but I had sense enough at sixteen to know that the problem wasn''t with Faulkner but with me. I was trying to work up the courage to tackle him again: if I began to collect him, I reasoned, I''d have to read him sooner or later. Carol shook her head. Look at it this way, I said, the Faulkners have appreciated about twenty percent in the three years I''ve owned them. That she understood. My apartment looked like an adjunct of the Denver Public Library. There were wall-to-wall books in every room. Carol had never asked the Big Dumb Question that people always ask when they come into a place like this: Jeez, d''ya read all these? She browsed, fascinated. The books have a loose logic to their shelving: mysteries in the bedroom; novels out here; art books, notably by the Wyeths, on the far wall. There''s no discrimination -- they are all first editions -- and when people try to go highbrow on me, I love reminding them that my as-new copy of Raymond Chandler''s Lady in the Lake is worth a cool $1,000 today, more than a bale of books by most of the critically acclaimed and already forgotten so-called masters of the art-and-beauty school. There''s nothing wrong with writing detective stories if you do it well enough. I''ve been collecting books for a long time. Once I killed two men in the same day, and this room had an almost immediate healing effect. I''ve missed my calling, I thought. But now was probably years too late to be thinking about it. Time to go. "Cliff?" Her eyes were still closed, but she was not quite asleep. "I''m leaving now," I said. "You going out to see Jackie Newton?" "If this is what it looks like, you better believe it." "Have Neal watch your flank. And both of you be careful." I went over and kissed her on the temple. Two minutes later I was in my car, gliding through the cool Denver night. Copyright © 1992 by John Dunning… (más)
Ninguno
Cargando...

Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará.

Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro.

» Ver también 2 menciones

Mostrando 2 de 2
Appropriately enough, I bought Booked to Die at a used book sale. Set in Denver, this mystery features Cliff Janeway, a police detective cum bookman. The murder of a book scout, Bobby Westfall, is a case assigned to Janeway, but things soon go awry. Only the murder of two more people kicks the investigation into overdrive.

This is the first of five Janeway mysteries so this book introduces him. He makes an interesting protagonist. He is tough and determined, but has difficulty with authority and is known to break the rules. Sometimes he acts impulsively and recklessly and ends up in trouble. I most enjoyed his intelligence and wit. He is very knowledgeable about books; a competing book dealer says, “Janeway is the best bookman I’ve ever seen outside the trade” (144). His witty comments lighten the tone throughout. He derides a bookseller who specializes in Stephen King books: “He specialized in King and his followers – Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, et al., the little Kinglets. Behind every big ship you’ll find a dozen little ships atrailing. Most of their plots make absolutely no sense, but again, they stand tall where it really matters in today’s world, at the damn cash register. . . . The stupidity of some of these plots that sell in the billions is the scariest thing about them” (46). He admits his penchant for one-liners: “’Miss McKinley, I’m wasting a helluva lot of great one-liners on you. I’m starting to think you’ve got no sense of humor at all’” (197).

The mystery is a standard whodunit. What makes the book stand out is its examination of the antiquarian book trade. The ins and outs of this often cut-throat world are detailed. Janeway’s specialty is first edition fiction. Who knew that The Grapes of Wrath with a doodle by Steinbeck could be worth $2,000? Of course, this book was first published over twenty years ago, so much has changed with the used book business with the advent of the internet.

At one point, Janeway comments, “There’s nothing wrong with writing detective stories if you do it well enough” (14). Dunning’s detective story is written well enough and will certainly appeal to any bibliophile. I’m not sure I’ll read the next book or the other three in the series, but should I come across them in a used book store, I’ll probably pick them up. ( )
  Schatje | Apr 10, 2014 |
Very quick potboiler bibliomysteries, but well worth reading. ( )
  JBD1 | Jan 11, 2006 |
Mostrando 2 de 2
sin reseñas | añadir una reseña

Pertenece a las series

Cliff Janeway (omnibus 1-2)
Debes iniciar sesión para editar los datos de Conocimiento Común.
Para más ayuda, consulta la página de ayuda de Conocimiento Común.
Título canónico
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Fecha de publicación original
Personas/Personajes
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés. Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Lugares importantes
Acontecimientos importantes
Películas relacionadas
Epígrafe
Dedicatoria
Primeras palabras
Citas
Últimas palabras
Aviso de desambiguación
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés. Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
John Dunning (1942- ), an American writer of detective fiction
Editores de la editorial
Blurbistas
Idioma original
DDC/MDS Canónico
LCC canónico

Referencias a esta obra en fuentes externas.

Wikipedia en inglés

Ninguno

From Booked to Die: Chapter One The phone rang. It was 2:30 A.M. Normally I am a light sleeper, but that night I was down among the dead. I had just finished a thirteen-hour shift, my fourth day running of heavy overtime, and I hadn''t been sleeping well until tonight. A guy named Jackie Newton was haunting my dreams. He was my enemy and I thought that someday I would probably have to kill him. When the bell went off, I was dreaming about Jackie Newton and our final showdown. For some reason -- logic is never the strong point of a dream like that -- Jackie and I were in the hallway at East High School. The bell brought the kids out for the change of classes; Jackie started shooting and the kids began to drop, and that bell kept ringing as if it couldn''t stop. In the bed beside me, Carol stirred. "Oh, Cliff," she groaned. "Would somebody please get that goddamn telephone?" I groped for the night table, felt the phone, and knocked the damn thing to the floor. From some distant galaxy I could hear the midget voice of Neal Hennessey, saying, "Cliff'...Cliff'...Hey, Clifford!" I reached along the black floor and found the phone, but it was still many seconds later before Hennessey took on his bearlike image in my mind. "Looks like we got another one," Hennessey said without preamble. I struggled to sit up, trying to get used to the idea that Jackie Newton hadn''t shot me after all. "Hey, Cliffie...you alive yet?" "Yeah, Neal, sure. First time I been sound asleep in a week." He didn''t apologize; he just waited. "Where you at?" I said. "Alley off Fifteenth, just up from the Denver Post. This one looks an awful lot like the others." "Give me about half an hour." "We''ll be here." I sat for another minute, then I got up and went into the bathroom. I turned on the light and looked in the mirror and got the first terrifying look at myself in the cold hard light of the new day. You''re getting old, Janeway, I thought. Old Andrew Wyeth could make a masterpiece out of a face like that. Call it Clifford Liberty Janeway at thirty-six, with no blemish eliminated and no character line unexplored. I splashed cold water on my face: it had a great deal less character after that. To finally answer Hennessey, yes, I was almost alive again. The vision of Jackie Newton rose up before me and my hand went automatically to the white splash of scar tissue just under my right shoulder. A bank robber had shot me there five years ago. I knew Jackie Newton would give a lot to put in another one, about three inches to the left and an inch or so down. Man with an old bullet wound, by Wyeth: an atypical work, definitely not your garden-variety Helga picture. When I came out of the bathroom Carol was up. She had boiled water and had a cup of instant coffee steaming on my nightstand. "What now?" she said. As I struggled into my clothes, I told her it looked like another derelict murder. She sighed loudly and sat on the bed. She was lovely even in a semistupor. She had long auburn hair and could probably double for Helga in a pinch. No one but Wyeth would know. "Would you like me to come with you?" I gave a little laugh, blowing the steam from my coffee. "Call it moral support," she said. "Just for the ride down and back. Nobody needs to see me. I could stay in the car." "Somebody would see you, all right, and then the tongues would start. It''d be all over the department by tomorrow." "You know something? I don''t even care." "I care. What we do in our own time is nobody''s business." I went to the closet and opened it. Our clothes hung there side by side -- the blue uniform Carol had worn on yesterday''s shift; my dark sport coat; our guns, which had become as much a part of the wardrobe as pants, shirts, ties, badges. I never went anywhere without mine, not even to the corner store. I had had a long career for a guy thirty-six: I''d made my share of enemies, and Jackie Newton was only the latest. I put the gun on under my coat. I didn''t wear a tie, wasn''t about to at that time of night. I was off duty and I''d just been roused from a sound sleep; I wasn''t running for city council, and I hated neckties. "I know you''ve been saying that for a long time now, that stuff about privacy," Carol said dreamily. "But I think the real reason is, if people know about me, I make you vulnerable." I didn''t want to get into it. It was just too early for a philosophical discourse. There was something in what Carol said, but something in what I said too. I''ve never liked office gossip, and I didn''t want people talking about her and me. But Carol had been looking at it from another angle lately. We had been seeing each other, in the polite vernacular, for a year now, and she was starting to want something more permanent. Maybe bringing our arrangement into the public eye would show me how little there was to worry about. People did it all the time. For most of them the world didn''t come to an end. Occasionally something good came out of it. So she thought. "I''m going back to bed," she said. "Wake me when you come in. Maybe I''ll have a nice surprise for you." She lay back and closed her eyes. Her hair made a spectacular sunburst on the pillow. I sat for a while longer, sipping my coffee. There wasn''t any hurry: a crime lab can take three hours at the scene. I''d leave in five minutes and still be well within the half hour I''d promised Hennessey. The trouble is, when I have dead time -- even five minutes unfilled in the middle of the night -- I begin to think. I think about Carol and me and all the days to come. I think about the job and all the burned-out gone-forever days behind us. I think about quitting and I wonder what I''d do. I think about being tied to someone and anchoring those ties with children. Carol would not be a bad one to do that with. She''s pretty and bright, and maybe this is what love is. She''s good company: her interests broaden almost every day. She reads three books to my one, and I read a lot. We talk far into the night. She still doesn''t understand the first edition game: Hemingway, she says, reads just as well in a two-bit paperback as he does in a $500 first printing. I can still hear myself lecturing her the first time she said that. Only a fool would read a first edition. Simply having such a book makes life in general and Hemingway in particular go better when you do break out the reading copies. I listened to myself and thought, This woman must think I''m a government-inspected horse''s ass. Then I showed her my Faulkners, one with a signature, and I saw her shiver with an almost sexual pleasure as she touched the paper where he''d signed it. Faulkner was her most recent god, and I had managed to put together a small but respectable collection of his first editions. You''ve got to read this stuff, she said to me when she was a month deep in his work. How can you collect the man without ever reading what he''s written? In fact, I had read him, years ago: I never could get the viewpoints straight in The Sound and the Fury, but I had sense enough at sixteen to know that the problem wasn''t with Faulkner but with me. I was trying to work up the courage to tackle him again: if I began to collect him, I reasoned, I''d have to read him sooner or later. Carol shook her head. Look at it this way, I said, the Faulkners have appreciated about twenty percent in the three years I''ve owned them. That she understood. My apartment looked like an adjunct of the Denver Public Library. There were wall-to-wall books in every room. Carol had never asked the Big Dumb Question that people always ask when they come into a place like this: Jeez, d''ya read all these? She browsed, fascinated. The books have a loose logic to their shelving: mysteries in the bedroom; novels out here; art books, notably by the Wyeths, on the far wall. There''s no discrimination -- they are all first editions -- and when people try to go highbrow on me, I love reminding them that my as-new copy of Raymond Chandler''s Lady in the Lake is worth a cool $1,000 today, more than a bale of books by most of the critically acclaimed and already forgotten so-called masters of the art-and-beauty school. There''s nothing wrong with writing detective stories if you do it well enough. I''ve been collecting books for a long time. Once I killed two men in the same day, and this room had an almost immediate healing effect. I''ve missed my calling, I thought. But now was probably years too late to be thinking about it. Time to go. "Cliff?" Her eyes were still closed, but she was not quite asleep. "I''m leaving now," I said. "You going out to see Jackie Newton?" "If this is what it looks like, you better believe it." "Have Neal watch your flank. And both of you be careful." I went over and kissed her on the temple. Two minutes later I was in my car, gliding through the cool Denver night. Copyright © 1992 by John Dunning

No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca.

Descripción del libro
Resumen Haiku

Debates activos

Ninguno

Cubiertas populares

Enlaces rápidos

Valoración

Promedio: (3.89)
0.5
1 1
1.5
2
2.5
3 4
3.5
4 7
4.5 2
5 4

¿Eres tú?

Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing.

 

Acerca de | Contactar | LibraryThing.com | Privacidad/Condiciones | Ayuda/Preguntas frecuentes | Blog | Tienda | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas heredadas | Primeros reseñadores | Conocimiento común | 203,186,196 libros! | Barra superior: Siempre visible