The Book Stops Here (Mobile Library Series #3)

by Ian Sansom

Overview

Disgruntled, disheveled, fish-out-of-water mobile librarian Israel Armstrong is finally going home to London, rattling along with his irascible companion Ted Carson in their rust bucket book van en route to the Mobile Meet. The annual library convention gives Israel the opportunity to catch up with his family, eat paprika chicken and baklava, and drink good coffee. But they've barely found parking when the unimaginable occurs: their library-on-wheels is stolen!

Who on earth would want to take a thirty-year-old traveling disaster with the words "The Book Stops Here" painted across the back? Israel and Ted are determined to find out. But their search is leading them on a very twisty trail through the countryside in pursuit of a suspicious convoy of New Age travelers. And the hunt is raising numerous troubling questions—such as where exactly is Israel's high-flying girlfriend, Gloria? And is Ted really making a move on Israel's widowed mother?

Customer Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061873072
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/13/2009
Series:	Mobile Library Series , #3
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	412 KB

About the Author

Ian Sansom is a frequent contributor and critic for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The London Review of Books, and The Spectator and a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. He is the author of nine books including Paper: An Elegy, and the Mobile Library Series.

Read an Excerpt

The Book Stops Here
A Mobile Library Mystery

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By Ian Sansom
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2008
Ian Sansom
All right reserved.

ISBN: 9780061452000

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One

I resign,' said Israel.

'Aye,' said Ted.

'I do,' said Israel.

'Good,' said Ted.

'I've made up my mind. I'm resigning,' said Israel. 'Today.'

'Right you are,' said Ted.

'I've absolutely had enough.'

'Uh-huh.'

'Of the whole thing. This place! The—'

'­People,' said Ted.

'Exactly!' said Israel. 'The ­people! Exactly! The ­people, they drive me—'

'Crazy,' said Ted.

'Exactly! You took the words right out of my mouth.'

'Aye, well, you might've mentioned it before,' said Ted.

'Well, this is it. I'm up to—'

'High dough,' said Ted.

'What?' said Israel.

'You're up to high dough with it.'

'No,' said Israel. 'No. I don't even know what it means, up to high dough with

it. What the hell's that supposed to mean?'

'It's an expression.'

'Ah, right yes. It would be. Anyway, I'm up to . . . here with it.'

'Good.'

'I'm going to hand in my resignation to Linda.'

'Excellent,' said Ted.

'Before the meeting today.'

'Firstclass,' said Ted.

'Before she has a chance to trick me out of it again.'

'Away you go then.'

'I am so gone already. I am out of here. I tell you, you are not going to see me for dust. I'm moving on.'

'Mmm.'

'I'm going! Look!'

'Ach, well, it's been a pleasure, sure. We're all going to miss you.'

'Yes,' said Israel.

'Good,' said Ted.

'So,' said Israel.

'You've time for a wee cup of coffee at Zelda's first, mind? For auld time's sake?'

'No!' said Israel. 'I need to strike while the—'

'And a wee scone, but?'

Israel looked at his watch.

'Meeting's not till three,' said Ted.

'What day is it?' said Israel.

'Wednesday.'

'What's the scone on Wednesdays?'

'Date and almond,' said Ted, consulting his mental daily-special scone timetable.

Israel huffed. 'All right,' he said. 'But then we need to get there early. I am definitely, definitely resigning.'

They'd had this conversation before, around about mid-week, and once a week, for several months now, Israel Armstrong BA (Hons) and Ted Carson—the Starsky and Hutch, the Morse and Lewis, the Thomson and Thompson, the Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the Dante and Virgil, the Cagney and Lacey, the Deleuze and Guattari, the Mork and Mindy of the mobile library world.

Israel had been living in Tumdrum for long enough—more than six months!—to find the routine not just getting to him, but actually having got to him; the self-same rainy days which slowly and silently became weeks and then months, and which seemed gradually to be slowing, and slowing, and slowing, almost but not quite to a complete and utter stop, so that it felt to Israel as though he'd been stuck in Tumdrum on the mobile library not just for months, but for years, indeed for decades almost. He never should have taken the job here in the first place; it was an act of desperation. He felt trapped; stuck; in complete and utter stasis. He felt incapacitated. He felt like he was in a never-ending episode of 24 or a play by Samuel Beckett.

'This is like Krapp's Last Tape,' he told Ted, once they were settled in Zelda's and Minnie was bringing them coffee.

'Is it?' said Ted.

'Are ye being rude about my coffee?' said Minnie.

'No,' said Israel. 'I'm just talking about a play.'

'Ooh!' said Minnie.

'Beckett?' said Israel.

'Beckett?' said Minnie. 'He was a Portora boy, wasn't he?'

'What?' said Israel.

'In Enniskillen there,' said Minnie. 'The school, sure. That's where he went to school, wasn't it?'

'I don't know,' said Israel. 'Samuel Beckett?'

'Sure he did,' said Minnie. 'What was that play he did?'

'Waiting for Godot?' said Israel.

'Was it?' said Minnie. 'It wasn't Educating Rita?'

'Riverdance,' said Ted. 'Most popular Irish show of all time.'

'That's not a play,' said Israel wearily.

'Aye, you're a theatre critic now, are ye?'

'Och,' said Minnie. 'And who was the other fella?'

'What?' said Israel.

'That went to school there, at Portora?'

'No, you've got me,' said Israel. 'No idea.'

'Ach, sure ye know. The homosexualist.'

'You've lost me, Minnie, sorry.'

'Wrote the plays. "A handbag!" That one.'

'Oscar Wilde?'

'He's yer man!' said Minnie. 'He was another Portora boy, wasn't he, Ted?'

Ted was busy emptying the third of his traditional three sachets of sugar into his coffee. 'Aye.'

'Zelda's nephew went there,' said Minnie. 'The one in Fermanagh there.'

'Right,' said Israel. 'Anyway . . .'

'I'll check with her.'

'Fine,' said Israel.

'And your scones are just coming,' said Minnie.

'That's grand,' said Ted, producing a pack of cigarettes.

'Uh-uh,' said Minnie, wagging her finger. 'We've gone no smoking.'

'Ye have not?' said Ted.

'We have indeed.'

'Since when?'

'The weekend, just.'

'Ach,' said Ted. 'That's the political correctness.'

'I know,' said Minnie. 'It's what ­people want though, these days.' 'You'll lose custom, but.' 'Aye.' 'Nanny state,' said Ted, obediently putting away his cigarettes and lighter.

'Smoking kills,' said Israel.

'Aye, and so do a lot of other things,' said Ted darkly.

'It is a shame, really,' said Minnie. 'Sure, everybody used to smoke.' Israel stared at the yellowing walls of the café as Ted and Minnie reminisced about the great smokers of the past: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bette

Davis, Winston Churchill, Fidel Castro.

'Beagles,' said Israel.

'What?' said Minnie.

'And Sherlock Holmes,' added Israel.

'Aye,' said Ted.

'Was he not a druggie?' said Minnie.

'Sam Spade,' said Israel.

'Never heard of him,' said Minnie.

Sometimes Israel wished he was a gentleman detective, far away from here, with a cocaine and morphine habit, and a slightly less intelligent confidant to admire his genius. Or, like Sam Spade, the blond Satan, pounding the hard streets of San Francisco, entangling with knock-out redheads and outwitting the Fat Man. Instead, here he was in Zelda's, listening to Ted and Minnie and looking up at old Chris­tian Aid and Trócaire posters, and the dog-eared notices for the Citizens Advice Bureau, and the wilting pot plants, and the lone long-broken computer in the corner with the Blu-Tacked sign above it proclaiming the café Tumdrum's Internet hot spot, the first and still the best, and the big laminated sign over by the door featuring a man sitting slumped with his head in his hands, advertising the Samaritans: 'Suicidal? Depressed?'

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Book Stops Here by Ian Sansom
Copyright © 2008 by Ian Sansom. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

Despite the minimal crime element, Sansom's third Mobile Library mystery (after 2007's Mr. Dixon Disappears) still succeeds as a light farce. Mobile librarian Israel Armstrong puts his plans to resign on hold when his superiors in Northern Ireland offer him and his irritable companion, Ted Carson, a free trip to London to represent the district at an annual mobile library convention. Armstrong even manages to overcome Carson's initial reluctance by appealing to his pride, betting Carson that their own ratty, aged and broken-down vehicle won't win a prize at the gathering. Soon after arrival in London, the van disappears, and the duo, aided by Armstrong's irrepressible mother, set off on a comic quest to recover it in time for the competition. The book's high point is the acerbic portrayal of the personalities making up the Mobile Library Steering Committee, but most every page will elicit a grin, if not a chuckle. (Aug.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

A vegetarian Jewish bookmobile driver transplanted from London gets homesick. Now settled in Tumdrum, Northern Ireland (The Case of the Missing Books, 2007, etc.), Israel Armstrong misses everything he left behind: Grodzinski's cheesecake and espresso, his mates at The Bargain Bookstore, reading Booker prizewinners and, maybe most of all, his girlfriend Gloria. So when his boss Linda offers to send him and his bookmobile partner over to London to pick out a new van at the Mobile Meet, Israel is eager to go. Ted, by contrast, loves every rusty nut and bolt and engine whine in their van and doesn't want to replace it. Then canny Israel bets Ted £1000 that their van won't win the Meet's Concours D'Elegance prize. And off they go. Alas, a stopover at Israel's childhood home in Finchley has calamitous results. Ted chats up Israel's mum, and, almost worse, their van is stolen, propelling Israel's mum into organizational overdrive and sending the heroic pair on a wild chase after travelers who have repainted the van to resemble a New Age poster and decamped with it to initiate solstice rites at Stonehenge. The mystery's barely there, but the company in this slapstick satire is so appealing that you'll never miss it, especially when Ted makes up more words than Mrs. Malaprop and Israel keeps bumping into reasons why London isn't home anymore.

Kirkus Reviews

Hang around for what promises to be a very enjoyable series.

The Observer

A work of tender and bonhomous refraction…pleasing, amusing and honest.

Newsday

Ian Sansom is as expertly comic as his hero is comically inept.

London Times

One of the most unlikely detectives you’ll ever come across.

Daily Express

A humane, big-hearted and sometimes devastatingly funny book.

LA Weekly