(courtesy Penguin Books Australia)
The world can be a scary, messy and wildly unpredictable place, and while we can’t always run, for any length of reasonable time anyway, from the things that haunt and scare us, we can seek temporary solace in happy places of our choosing.
One of the places this reviewer chooses, and this will surprise not on jot given the happy preponderance of a certain type of storytelling medium on this blog, to keep the disquieting day terrors at bay, are bookshops, a haven full of words and comfort and stories with o much possibility that small-time narrative scope of the real world pales in comparison.
Bookshops may not seem like the place to solve a crime nor booksellers the ones to get their gritty Agatha Christie on, and solve them, but in The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone by Gareth Ward and Louise Ward, that is precisely what happens, and the result is a book that gives you a warm cosy hug that comes with a hearty side order of crime-busting meaningfulness.
Ex-coppers from the UK who found a new home in New Zealand, the Wards bring a great deal of themselves to the two lead characters, wife and husband Eloise and Garth, who by day run the Sherlock Tomes bookshop in Havelock North – one of the running gags, judiciously used is their surname of Sherlock – and by night seek a relatively quiet life with their anxiety-plague rescue dog Stevie who is learning, as do we all, that this is a couple you definitely want in your corner when mysteries beckon.
… when we reopened after the Covid lockdown, we had customers coming into the shop in tears, grateful that we had weathered the storm and weren’t going to close. It made me realise that our little bookshop is so much more than just a retailer; it is a safe, welcoming sanctuary for those who need us, a real community space. And one whose future is now in jeopardy.
It’s no good, I’ve got to go and talk to Eloise right now. We built the bookshop together and we’ll save it together.
Now, before you think they have a secret weapons-packed crime-fighting lair beneath the bookshop – unlikely; their office is barely big enough to function as an admin centre – or don latex and lycra to fight the demons of the night John Wick-style, it must be noted that the Garth and Eloise are quite happy to have left their old policing lives behind them.
But when a mysterious package is left at the bookshop, entreating them to investigate a two-decades old mystery where a schoolgirl disappeared and a host of possible townspeople might have done the suspected deed, they decide they have no choice but to get to the bottom of things which, as it turns out, are very unexpectedly interesting and more than a little terrifying.
This is all while, and doesn’t the timing suck, they have to prep their small regional bookstore for the launch of the biggest of the year by one of the most popular, sought-after authors on the planet, which could make or break their bookshop and out them on the literary map … or, you know, wipe them rather ungraciously off it.
So, no pressure then?
Okay, maybe just a little, but while Eloise and Garth, one feisty and pink-haired, the other more circumspect and careful, do have the weight of celebrity publishing on their shoulders and town-defining mystery to solve, they somehow manage to keep their cool (largely) throughout. (Save for the lingering shadow of one case whose central murderous figure haunts Eloise to a darly soul-disquieting degree.)
(courtesy Penguin Books Australia)
Maybe it’s because they were once police-people or perhaps because they’re in love with each other to a huggable but realistically grounded degree, that they manage to somehow juggle all the pressure of sleuthing and event planning, but whatever the secret to their collective cool, they manage to be the kinds of characters you want planning your celebrity book launch and solving a mystery that has long-loved in the public imagination of their adopted town with no easy resolution to hand.
Of course, being a firm and funny denizen of the cosy crime genre, there’s no doubt resolution will be found, but Gareth Ward and Louise Ward manage to make The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone feel freshly alive and vibrantly witty and original in a way that transcends the many tropes and cliches of the genre, and to deliver, in case you felt there wasn’t enough wonderful things going on, a love letter to bookshops and their power to reshape worlds for the better.
The bookshop does feature heavily in the novel, and while the realities of running a business are acknowledged and embraced – cosy the story may be but it’s no fantasy and knows that even the real world demands its pound of flesh from heart-reassuring places – The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone serves a place and people (the staff are a quirky, found-family joy) that will fill your heart with the certainty that bookshops are the place to find escape and healing from the world.
He nods and stands, then turns, Columbo-like. ‘I have one last question. You said Prudence believed her only friend in the world was dead. Do you believe she is?’
‘Yes, mate, I do. After all these years, she has to be.’ Tama’s face is serious. ‘Talk to Franklin White. He’s always been the key to what happened to Tracey.’
Think that’s a lot to expect from one retail location?
Consider the fact that when this reviewer is stressed (hugely taxing job) or sad, and just plain every day rudderless, entering a favourite bookshop is the salve that can rebuild, at least in part, the fractured wreckage of the soul.
It’s not just that you can buy books and stories and possibility there; it’s often the people who staff them that make the difference, and that’s on full display in The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone as Garth and Eloise not only make the lives of their customers better but also their staff who are having to deal with the fact that someone is stealing the flower heads from the lovely planter box outside the shop’s entrance.
In the bookshop at the heart of all the well-executed and clue-rich mystery solving, which honestly is done at just the right pace of revelations and suspense, Eloise and Garth gives a slew of disparate souls a place to belong, to be heard, to matter and to be considered worthwhile, no matter how idiosyncratic their requests might be.
And it’s the same heart and soul and thoughtful nous that they bring to the bookshop that propels the mystery to a hearty and meaningful resolution, and even though their shop’s future might be on the line, and the dark undercurrents of society may yet win, they keep on going infusing The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone with wit, cleverness, dialogue that sings and a narrative that feels weighty and light all at once and which gives a sense that twisty and uncertain though life can be, that maybe it will, in fact, be all right in the end.