{"id":1908,"date":"2022-10-13T01:38:02","date_gmt":"2022-10-13T01:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=1908"},"modified":"2023-03-11T18:30:17","modified_gmt":"2023-03-11T18:30:17","slug":"death-of-a-bookseller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=1908","title":{"rendered":"Death of a Bookseller"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A dangerous obsession, true crime, bookselling, alcoholism, and trauma\u2014add some dark humor\u2014and you have the ingredients for this utterly unique tale set in Spines, a present-day-London bookstore.<\/strong> Young, post-punk Roach has only ever worked as a bookseller at Spines, where she can indulge in her obsession with true crime\u2014female victims only, please\u2014and way overstock the true-crime section. Her Mom runs a bar and basically ignores Roach, while Roach\u2019s boyfriend is an unwashed brute in a death metal t-shirt. But things aren\u2019t going so well at this branch of Spines these days, and the corporate office has transferred some seasoned employees to bolster sales. This includes Laura, who\u2019s all vintage dresses and rose oil, berets and hand-rolled cigarettes. She\u2019s what Roach would call a \u201cnormie,\u201d until Roach hears her give a poetry reading in which she references many of Roach\u2019s favorite true-crime victims. Roach becomes obsessed with Laura, eventually going full-on stalker. But while Roach is fascinated with the perps, Laura is disgusted by the true-crime genre for glorifying these creeps. Instead, she pays homage to the victims, and does so from a very personal perspective. As Laura\u2019s drinking becomes more and more out of control, it becomes easier and easier for Roach to take over, playing with Laura\u2019s sense of reality and leading to an ending as dark as it is credible. The novel includes a wonderful cast of booksellers who bring some humorous subplots to the book. Readers who enjoyed Laura Sims\u2019 <em>How Can I Help You<\/em>, reviewed here last week, will be ecstatic to meet these women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A dangerous obsession, true crime, bookselling, alcoholism, and trauma\u2014add some dark humor\u2014and you have the ingredients for this utterly unique tale set in Spines, a present-day-London bookstore. Young, post-punk Roach&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[50,51],"class_list":["post-1908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-suspense","tag-thrillers"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Death-1-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Death-1.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Brian Kenney","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}