A Deadly Business (Lenny Bartulin, Scribe, $27.95 pb, ISBN 9781921372025, April) ****

While there are a few high-flyers wheeling and dealing in first editions and ‘the good stuff’, for the most part the second-hand book trade has traditionally been thought of as a world of musty, dusty stock and bored, grumpy people in cardigans. Who would have thought that this milieu could generate a tale involving mysterious phone-calls, a sexy but treacherous dame, intense sibling rivalry, arson, crooked cops and—ultimately—murder? However unlikely it may seem, this is the world of Lenny Bartulin’s debut crime novel A Deadly Business. Jake Susko is contemplating another slow day in his Sydney basement shop when a phone-call sends him off in search of books by an obscure poet that a collector is willing to pay $50 each for. Susko thinks himself lucky to track down six books and make a few hundred dollars—but once the first delivery is made, things start to get very complicated. This is a witty, clever debut, full of injokes and colourful characters. The author is clearly a fan of the noir classics—particularly Raymond Chandler—and he negotiates the tricky path between homage and pastiche better than many more seasoned writers of the genre. There is already a second Jake Susko book in the works: with any luck this will mark the beginning of an excellent series.

Tim Coronel is deputy publisher of Bookseller+Publisher

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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