Death of a bookseller / Alice Slater.

Select an Action

Title:

Death of a bookseller / Alice Slater.

Author:

Slater, Alice, author.

ISBN:

9781613163771

Edition:

First Scarlet Press edition.

Physical Description:

x, 368 pages ; 23 cm.

Abstract:

In this "utterly unforgettable" debut, a disaffected, true crime-obsessed bookseller develops a dangerous obsession with a colleague.

Roach would rather be listening to the latest episode of her favorite true crime podcast than assisting the boring and predictable customers at her local branch of the bookstore Spines, where she's worked her entire adult life. A serious true crime junkie, Roach looks down her nose at the pumpkin-spice-latte-drinking casual fans who only became interested in the genre once it got trendy. But when Laura, a pretty and charismatic children's bookseller, arrives to help rejuvenate the struggling bookstore branch, Roach recognizes in her an unexpected kindred spirit. Despite their common interest in true crime, Laura keeps her distance from Roach, resisting the other woman's overtures of friendship. Undeterred, Roach learns everything she can about her new colleague, eventually uncovering Laura's traumatic family history. When Roach realizes that she may have come across her very own true crime story, interest swiftly blooms into a dangerous obsession.

Subject Term:

Booksellers and bookselling -- Fiction.

True crime stories -- Fiction.

Podcasts -- Fiction.

Female friendship -- Fiction.

Genre:

Thrillers (Fiction) (OCoLC)fst01726755

Thrillers (Fiction)

Detective and mystery fiction.

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library	Adult Fiction Book Hardback	120791003038367	F SLA	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A Sunday Times bestseller

In this "utterly unforgettable" debut (Catherine Ryan Howard), a disaffected, true crime-obsessed bookseller develops a dangerous obsession with a colleague.

Despite their common interest in true crime, Laura keeps her distance from Roach, resisting the other woman's overtures of friendship. Undeterred, Roach learns everything she can about her new colleague, eventually uncovering Laura's traumatic family history. When Roach realizes that she may have come across her very own true crime story, interest swiftly blooms into a dangerous obsession.

A darkly funny suspense novel, Death of a Bookseller raises ethical questions about the fervor for true crime and how we handle stories that don't belong to us.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Brogan Roach and Laura Bunting--the narrators of Slater's bleak debut--meet when the new manager of the failing London bookstore branch at which caustic Roach has long worked hires chipper Laura to boost sales. The women are like oil and water: Roach wears only black and is obsessed with true crime, while Laura sports colorful berets and thinks true crime is "tacky, exploitative crap." But when Roach learns that Laura writes poetry about murder victims because her mother fell prey to a notorious serial killer, Roach starts stalking Laura, desperate to convince her they share a "dark connection." The harder Roach tries, the more her misguided actions repulse and terrify Laura, locking the two in a dangerous downward spiral that threatens mutual destruction. Roach and Laura alternate chapters, their first-person-present accounts imparting tension and urgency. Both characters feel a bit cartoonish in their melodrama, but on balance, Slater delivers a twisty exploration of society's fascination with the macabre. Fans of Simone St. James's The Book of Cold Cases, take note. Agent: Caroline Eisenmann, Frances Goldin Literary. (Apr.)

Kirkus Review

Slater's darkly comic debut follows the increasingly uneasy relations between two co-workers who have very different investments in true crime. "I've always had a thing for death," confesses Brogan Roach. Though she works at Spines Walthamstow, a failing branch of a bookstore with other locations around London, she finds her true vocation as a zealous reader, researcher, and follower of true-crime stories and podcasts, looking down her nose at self-avowed fans who flinch from the nasty details that are her meat and drink. When Laura Bunting arrives at the shop in connection with new manager Sharona's attempt to raise it from the dying, Roach is first struck by Laura's instant antipathy toward her, then transfixed by the poems Laura presents at a local reading, then increasingly entranced by this woman who makes it clear that she wants nothing to do with her. They must be sisters under the skin, Roach reasons, and in her own way she's quite correct, for Laura's connected to Roach's passion in the worst way possible: Ten years ago, her mother became the final victim of the Stow Strangler. Police officer Lee Frost was convicted and imprisoned long ago for four of the Strangler's five murders, but Laura continues to be as haunted by her death as Roach is by all those other deaths she can't get enough of. Slater spins a compelling tale of Roach's fatal fascination with Laura, but the tale unfolds with remarkably few twists, and the ones that come will surprise only newcomers to the genre. The highly ambivalent ending will please devotees of Schrödinger's cat while leaving others out in the cold. One modest bonus: You may never feel the same way about bookstores again. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Brogan Roach is a bookseller and true-crime junkie who enjoys listening to her favorite podcast, The Murder Girls, and caring for her pet snail, Bleep. She is also a loner with a passion for reading about murder and death. Her life is inexplicably changed when a new employee, Laura Bunting, joins the staff at Brogan's store, Spines. Normally, Brogan avoids what she calls Pumpkin Spice Girls, the type of women who order complicated drinks at coffee houses, but she is intrigued by Laura's beauty, impeccable style, and passionate poetry. However, Laura is completely uninterested in befriending Brogan, who turns her fantasy of friendship into a dangerous obsession. Slater's debut is a very dark, character-driven, slow-burn suspense novel. Both Laura and Brogan are intriguingly flawed characters who have different stories to tell but who also have a lot in common. Through their alternating perspectives, Slater explores the ethics surrounding our obsession with true crime and questions how we should handle other people's stories. This highly original, whip-smart first novel will have crime lovers second-guessing their next read.