John Dunning
The Bookwoman’s Last Fling
Scribner, New York, 2006, 337 pp.
Pocket Books, New York, 2007, pb, 528 pp.
The Bookwoman’s Last Fling on Ponydom
Cliff Janeway is a former homicide detective who is now an antiquarian book dealer,
though one who is far more involved
in mysteries than the average book dealer. A
racehorse trainer, H R Geiger invites Janeway to Idaho to appraise his
wife’s collection
of children’s books, but by the time Janeway arrives, Geiger is dead. The book collection
is not as it
ought to be either: some volumes are missing. Janeway investigates
their disappearance, and that of Geiger’s long dead
wife.
John Dunning is an antiquarian bookdealer and author. Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1942, he was, he said, “ a raging failure early in life. Quit high school, then got kicked out of the Army with a broken eardrum after only two weeks, went on to work in a Charleston glass shop for $1.05 an hour, and looked to be on a fast track to nowhere.” He moved to Denver, and managed to get a job on the racetrack, after which he worked for trainers in Denver, Idaho, California and Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, CA. It was a magic time in his life.
In 1966 he began to work as a journalist, worked in politics, and in 1984 started the Old Algonquin Bookshop with his wife Helen. The shop still runs, though now just as an internet entity. John Dunning started writing the Bookman series, whose hero is Cliff Janeway, in 1994 with Booked to Die. The Cliff Janeway series is not generally horse based, but one title at least is: The Bookwoman’s Last Fling.
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