≫ Read Gratis The Bookman Promise Cliff Janeway Novels John Dunning 9780743476294 Books

The Bookman Promise Cliff Janeway Novels John Dunning 9780743476294 Books

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The Bookman Promise Cliff Janeway Novels John Dunning 9780743476294 Books

The Bookman's Promise is the third in the Cliff Janeway series and is most solidly written of the three. Retired (sorta) detective and bookseller Cliff Janeway uses some of the proceeds of his previous adventure (The Bookman's Wake) to buy a rare edition by Sir Richard Burton -- the explorer, not the actor. The publicity surrounding his purchase of this edition at an auction leads him into another mystery concerning a purloined inheritance, some very dangerous men, and another of the delightful female characters Dunning loves to carefully craft then toss away. In the past Cliff Janeway has always skirted along the edge of being just as much outside the law as the criminals he hunts, this time he is placed in the position of potentially owing a substantial favor to a childhood friend who is now a mob chieftain.

The plot is tightly written and doesn't suffer from the digression in Burtons (maybe) adventures in South Carolina on the eve of the Civil War. Janeway is strongly drawn and the supporting characters are well conceived and believable. Well worth the reading.


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The Bookman Promise Cliff Janeway Novels John Dunning 9780743476294 Books Reviews

After an eight year wait, John Dunning returns to his Bookman character, Cliff Janeway in a new novel that catapults the reader into a variety of worlds. First, there is the world of the book scout where the author describes finding and collecting valuable books. Janeway is now a bookstore owner and his purchase of a first edition of 19th century daredevil, linguist and explorer Richard Francis Burton leads to a radio interview, which gets picked up by newspapers on a slow news day and the publicity attracts a woman in her 90s who claims that the book was part of a collection scammed away from her family by an unscrupulous family of book sellers. A bookperson will be interested in the author's description of writers, collectors, and publishers. The woman introduces the second world, the United States in the 1860s where Burton and her grandfather travel the south and Burton may or may not be a spy for the British. On her deathbed she gives another signed first edition to Janeway on the condition that he will promise to try to find the collection, which has been missing for 80 years. Janeway promises and enters a dangerous world of murder, mobsters and crooked booksellers where nobody is quite what they appear to be. Cracking wise and living dangerously, Janeway follows the clues and his own moral compass to find the collection, track down the murderer of a friend and, he hopes, get the girl. If it is at times difficult to suspend disbelief at some of the plot twists and turns, it is in the end well worth the effort.
In this novel John Dunning has our hero, Cliff Janeway, again searching for answers in the world of rare books while he tries to solve a modern murder.

For the backdrop of this excellent novel, the author chose the period of time where Richard Francis Burton was in the US just prior to the Civil War. There is a missing piece of Burton's life and the author fills it with a possible, but unlikely, scenario.

Dunning has again found his stride and this book is right up there with his first Cliff Janeway novel, Booked to Die. He balances the need for detail and plot twists with a practical story teller's art, and has turned out a very enjoyable reading experience.

He only has one glaring error in this book. The novel is set in the late 1980's, well after the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, and he has Janeway, who is a Colorado resident, look up a gun store in the phone book while he is in Charleston, SC, and go there and purchase a handgun. Sales of handguns to out of state residents were banned by the 1968 act, thus such a sale could not have taken place, unless Janeway was a Federal Firearms Licensed Dealer - something unlikely with Janeway's cop/bookseller background.
It took 12 years, but the bookman we came to know and love in "Booked to Die" (1992) is finally back. After a less-enjoyable-than-hoped for encore in 1995, this time Dunning's plot works much more effectively and he's got tough-guy bookman Cliff Janeway on track again. For the most part, the pace is fast and furious, and just as in the original novel filled with fascinating minutia about the business - or should I say passion - of collecting rare books. For some, these side trips into the world of rare books might be offputting, but to me they are the frosting on the cake and I don't mind them at all. That said, there are a few false steps here; a hoodlum whose connection to and interest in a down-at-the-heels bookseller is hard to swallow, and an extended flashback to the days leading up to the beginning of the Civil War that puts the central plot on hold for several chapters. Yet even this is enjoyable as Dunning introduces us to the long dead subject of Janeway's search, author and historian Richard Burton. I can see the dilemma facing an author setting out to write this novel. How many different ways can you evolve a plot from the search for a book, the disappearance of a book? Not all that many, I think, and thanks to that, Dunning has thrown everything into this one, including a piece of advice that might actually have been responsible for starting the Civil War.

Art Tirrell is the author of 2007's surprise hit, "The Secret Ever Keeps"

"Simply put...the best underwater scenes I've ever read."
The Bookman's Promise is the third in the Cliff Janeway series and is most solidly written of the three. Retired (sorta) detective and bookseller Cliff Janeway uses some of the proceeds of his previous adventure (The Bookman's Wake) to buy a rare edition by Sir Richard Burton -- the explorer, not the actor. The publicity surrounding his purchase of this edition at an auction leads him into another mystery concerning a purloined inheritance, some very dangerous men, and another of the delightful female characters Dunning loves to carefully craft then toss away. In the past Cliff Janeway has always skirted along the edge of being just as much outside the law as the criminals he hunts, this time he is placed in the position of potentially owing a substantial favor to a childhood friend who is now a mob chieftain.

The plot is tightly written and doesn't suffer from the digression in Burtons (maybe) adventures in South Carolina on the eve of the Civil War. Janeway is strongly drawn and the supporting characters are well conceived and believable. Well worth the reading.