Booksellers’ picks of the year: crime and mystery

The third instalment of Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce series, A Red Herring Without Mustard (Doubleday Canada), is one of the most popular crime and mystery titles of 2011, according to booksellers contacted by Q&Q.

Two other new books from established authors, Louise Penny’s A Trick of the Light (St. Martin’s Press/Raincoast) and Peter Robinson’s Before the Poison (McClelland & Stewart), are also among booksellers’ top 2011 crime and mystery titles.

A lesser-known Ontario author, retired aeronautical professional Liam Dwyer, has been one of the year’s top-selling authors at The Sleuth of Baker Street in Toronto. Co-owner Marian Misters says Murdoch in Muskoka (Muskoka Dockside Reader), a new omnibus containing the first three titles in Dwyer’s murder-mystery series, has been especially popular.

At Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore in Winnipeg, co-owner Jack Bumsted points to local author C.C. Benison’s Christmas mystery, Twelve Drummers Drumming (Doubleday Canada), as his store’s best-selling book of the year. Other top 2011 titles at Whodunit? include Q&Q book of the year The Water Rat of Wanchai and The Disciple of Las Vegas, both from Ian Hamilton’s Ava Lee series published by Spiderline, the new crime fiction imprint from House of Anansi Press.

Walter Sinclair, co-owner of Dead Write Books in Vancouver, says the best-selling 2011 books in his store have common features. “All are well-established authors, all with mysteries featuring series characters,” he says. Dead Write’s top titles this year include William Deverell’s latest Arthur Beauchamp mystery, I’ll See You in My Dreams (M&S), and the U.K. edition of Louise Penny’s Bury Your Dead (Headline/Hachette).

Prime Crime closes up shop

Prime Crime Mystery Bookstore, a popular shop in Ottawa’s Glebe neighbourhood, has announced it will close its doors on March 13th. The store opened in 1985, and owner Linda Wiken, who is also a crime writer, has been running it since 1995. Wiken told the Ottawa Citizen she had been trying to sell the store for over a year, and that it was “just time to move on.”

Despite the presence of big-box book retailers in Ottawa, Prime Crime carved out of a niche for itself. The 300-square-foot store with the skeleton in the window won the 2001 Canadian Booksellers Association award as specialty bookseller of the year.

Bookmarks: More layoffs at Random House U.S., the credit crunch, and Richard Price’s behind

Sundry links from the Web:

• More wreckage at Random House U.S.: Pantheon Books publisher Janice Goldklang is laid off after 25 years with the company.
• How well do you know crime fiction? Take the Ceeb’s online quiz to find out.
• You know that heart-wrenching YouTube video, the one where two shaggy-haired hippies are reunited with their long-lost pet lion? Apparently, their story was recorded in a 1972 non-fiction book called A Lion Called Christian, now the sixth most requested out-of-print book on Bookfinder.com.
• They say that American pop culture is always more inventive when a Republican is in office. Now, The Independent asks whether the credit crunch has a silver lining for literature.
• If 2008 was the year of Roberto Bolaño, will 2009 be the year of Richard Yates?
• Richard Price threatens to bare his ass.