The Mysterious Bookshop

Looking like our biggest book club turnout to date tomorrow

The bench is the bookmark here

Sunday afternoon rereading Golden Age Whodunits in advance of our online book club Zoom with Otto Penzler tomorrow evening, 7 PM. Email charles@mysteriousbookshop.com if you’d like to join!

The Talented Mr. Bruseaux He made his name in Chicago investigating race riots, solving crimes, and exposing corruption. But America’s first Black private detective was hiding secrets of his own.

The remarkable story of America’s first Black private eye magazine.atavist.com/2025/the-tal...

Finally made it to @mysteriousbookshop.com . Well worth the trip if you are a book lover in NYC. Great space and staff is friendly giving excellent recommendations #booksky

Current train read catching up on a book that all my colleagues say launched one of the best recent PI series

That’s how I feel too — loved it when I read it 20 years ago but I wonder if it would feel as fresh today.

Also, if you still have that first edition, it’s $$$

A first edition of this polarizing book showed up at the shop this week. Does Bluesky like it or not?

Elmore Leonard and Otto Penzler at the original Mysterious Bookshop location on West 56th St. (seen on the Elmore Leonard Facebook page)

Dan Fesperman talking PARIAH with Paul Vidich right now in the store

NEW GOAL: Ocean's 11 style caper to steal this book

Ha. We just sold it for $50

The book was reissued the following year on sturdier stock, and would eventually become the Edgar-winning Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection

Just look at the breezy flip of this impossibly thin sheet

In 1971 the Hammermill paper company commissioned the Detectionary, “a biographical dictionary of the leading characters in detective and mystery fiction,” to show off its dictionary paper, then pulped nearly all 2,000 printed copies when the thin paper malfunctioned on press. This copy survived.

The list included one of the few pieces of fiction written by Otto Penzler, THIS PRIZE IS DANGEROUS, a solve-it-yourself whodunit that featured a cash prize for the correct answer

Today on the newsletter, we’ve got deals hotter than the New York City streets, selling off some intriguing Otto Penzler-edited anthologies from years past…

See the titles on offer here: mailchi.mp/mysteriousbo...

This is my magnum opus as bookshop chronicler