The Bookman's Promise

This story begins when Cliff Janeway appears on a radio program and talks about a rare book that he bought at an auction in Boston. He paid more than $29,000 for a copy of Pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca by Richard Burton. After his appearance, he hears from all sorts of people including those who want to sell him items by the actor Richard Burton. One of the calls, which he thought came from just one more nut, came from Josephine Gallant who tells him that the book was stolen from her family.

When Mrs. Gallant - nearly blind, over 90, and dying - comes to see him in Denver, Cliff begins to believe her story but wonders what he can do to find a book collection that has been missing for more than 80 years. Mrs. Gallant is befriended by a show more couple while she's in Denver and dies in their home. Just days later, the woman in the couple is found to have been smothered to death and her husband is the prime suspect. Cliff is determined to find her killer and to keep his promise to Mrs. Gallant to find her family's missing collection of Burton's books.

As Cliff investigates, we get a look into the world of book collecting as we see his friend Judge Lee Huxley and a pair of fourth generation book collectors in Baltimore. We meet Erin d'Angelo who is a mentee of the judge and Cliff''s new love interest. We also meet Koko Bujak who is a retired librarian who has hours of tape documenting Mrs. Gallant's life and a pair of rangers at Fort Sumter who are also fans of Richard Burton.

Woven through this whole story is Richard F. Burton who was a master linguist, soldier, spy, explorer and chronicler of his travels who was an immensely prolific author and a very important nineteenth-century character. Although he wrote about everything, there is one three-month period of his life that is missing. He traveled through the American South just before the Civil War with Charles Warren, the man who amassed the large collection of Burton's works that is the object of Cliff's hunt.

I really enjoyed the way the story was written. It is a memoir written after the time when Cliff tracked down the collection, hunted for a killer, and learned more about himself as a book collector. It includes a section about that missing three month period garnered from Mrs. Gallant's memories of what her grandfather told her and her own reading of the missing journal.

This book is the third in a five-book series. I want to know more about the past that is just briefly referred to in this one. He mentions leaving the police force under something of a cloud but I want to know more about Cliff and his transition from detective to bookseller and book collector. show less

The Bookman's Promise, by John Dunning

It's been a long time since Dunning's last book featuring Cliff Janeway, the Denver cop-turned-bookseller. Janeway buys a first edition of one of Richard Burton's books, inscribed to someone not mentioned in any of the biographies. He then receives an unexpected visit from Josephine Gallant, an elderly woman who tells him the person was her grandfather, that he had known Burton during his visit to the United States and had had an entire collection of inscribed firsts. But, with the exception of one which she brings with her, she says, her family had been cheated out of them years earlier by an unscrupulous bookseller, and now she wants Janeway to find them. Shortly thereafter, she dies, and someone show more else is murdered.

Janeway's search, now for a killer as well as books, takes him to Baltimore and Charleston, at Fort Sumter, as he follows the travels of Burton and Charles Warren, in the year before the Civil War.

I always enjoy books where a book is the McGuffin, though I would have liked a bit more about rare books and book-selling. That's where Dunning is at his best. And Dunning does know how to tell a story.

However, there were some problems with this book.

In his search for information about Gallant's ancestor, Janeway encounters Koko Bujak, a retired librarian who has interviewed Gallant for an oral history project. She hypnotized Gallant, and has many tapes of age-regression under hypnosis, with Gallant telling her memories of what her grandfather had said regarding Burton. Unfortunately, there is an assumption made that memory is like a photograph (or recording device), and that hypnosis will recover those memories with 100% accuracy. This is, of course, nonsense. First of all, memory doesn't work like that; scientists in the field have known this for years. And secondly, hypnosis, especially by an untrained person such as Bujak, is fraught with danger. The likelihood of suggestion and confabulation is high. (Which is why courts restrict the testimony of hypnotized witnesses.)

Another, related issue that I had with the book is that, in recalling these conversations, which concerned events that had occurred years before, Warren speaks, not in a conversational tone, but in a literary narrative voice. I've noticed that many authors do this, and I find it tremendously irritating. Either write the way someone would have spoken, or write it as a written narrative.

There's a subtle theme in this book of friendship and betrayal. At first I thought Dunning should have done more with it, but on reflection I think that his handling of it is right. It would have been too easy to hit the reader over the head.

On the whole, an enjoyable mystery. show less

Cliff Janeway is a book seller. Cliff Janeway was a cop. Both careers merged to create this story. I could not imagine that buying and selling books would involve murder, arson and guns but this book included all that and more. And it didn't disappoint. The writing was extraordinary and the plot intriguing. It also contained a story within the story and even that was very interesting. I just didnt' see the ending coming.
Definitely recommend this title.

Cliff is back, but this novel has a more cynical edge - maybe because he is looking back from the viewpoint of a man who has been betrayed. Another thing unique to this third book in the series is that it contains a story-within-a-story. Used to good effect, the story gives the reader a sense of the joy of book collecting - the magic of the backstory, the thrill of the mystery. And then there is the on-going question: will Janeway get the girl?

The discovery and purchase of an old Richard F Burton book triggers a series of stories that become nested mysteries. The first mystery is who was Charles Warren. Burton inscribed the book he gifted to Warren. That happened in 1860 pre US Civil war. The book is purchased by Cliff Janeway a former homicide cop who has become a book dealer and collector of rare books. He is contacted by an elderly woman who turns out to be the grand daughter of Charles Warren. We learn that Warren had a nearly complete collection of Burton’s books. They were swindled away from his daughter’s husband by a pair of shady book dealers from Baltimore.
The elderly woman dies before Janeway can learn a lot more. Then he discovers she had been befriended by a show more younger woman when she was living in an elder care home. That woman had a series of tapes she had made of the elderly woman speaking under anesthesia. She reveals her grandfather’s story of traveling to Charleston and Fort Sumter before the war and suggests that advice given by Burton may have lead to the opening act of the Civil war. It turns out Burton kept a notebook and diary and Janeway goes first to Baltimore and then Charleston in search of that volume. The story of that search is one of the nested mysteries. Another mystery was triggered by the smothering of a woman who had befriended the elderly woman when she came to Denver to speak with Janeway. And their is the Pulitzer Prize winning friend of a Judge friend of Janeway who is somehow mixed up with Burton’s story and his books. In the end the mysteries are unraveled thanks to a few unexpected coincidences. There is a night spent camping at Fort Sumter that involves a confrontation with a thug from Baltimore and a romance between Janeway and a young woman protégée of the Judge’s. show less

[This is a review I wrote in 2007]

**More great Dunning for book lovers!**

The third book in John Dunning's "Cliff Janeway" series is another compulsive page-turner. If you've only just discovered this author I recommend you start at the beginning with "Booked to Die", although these can probably be read in isolation as well. Watch out for Book 2, "The Bookman's Wake" which gets quite intense on the intricacies of the bookbinding and printing theme. The series are skilfully woven detective novels in their own right... but with a "book collector" theme, book lovers, collectors, and booksellers will just love them!

The Bookman's Promise opens with ex-cop, now recently established bookseller, Cliff Janeway purchasing a rare Richard Burton show more first edition for the staggering sum of $29,000 at auction! The sale of the book sparks a load of media interest across the US and Janeway gets a lot of calls from chancers hoping to sell him their "Burton" books. Then one day a very frail elderly lady turns up in his Denver bookshop. She's spent her last money on the journey to see him and claims Janeway's recently acquired prize possession as her own!! Her claim is that her grandfather Charles Warren travelled the American South to Charleston with Burton in the tense year before the outbreak of the American Civil War. The lady's health is failing rapidly... but all she's ever wanted is to find the rest of her grandfather's extensive collection of books by, and related to, Richard Burton. Can Janeway help her?

Really good, some great twists. Recommended for all book lovers. show less

The third Cliff Janeway book sees Cliff running after the ghost of Sir Richard Burton (no, not Elizabeth Taylor's husband, the other one, the Victorian explorer and polymath). Is it possible that Sir Richard started the American Civil War?

As usual, Cliff is rather an obnoxious thug, who thinks he's god's gift to women. Luckily he's got a couple of feisty women along this time, all too ready to hit him over the head with a two-by-four should he get too neanderthalish.

I also enjoyed the history lesson of the American Civil War, and I no longer think of Sir Richard Burton as that naughty man who translated the Karma Sutra. Well, he's still that, but an awful lot more.