Dewey Death (1958)

I ordered myself a copy of Dewey Death by Charity Blackstock (1958) after I saw it advertised in the back of Death at the Medical Board (sadly, I couldn't find the 1958 or 1963 edition, so I settled for this 1985 printing instead). Much like Death at the Medical Board, this mystery is terribly British and terribly post-war, but that doesn't distract at all from the fun.

Our story takes place at the Inter-Libraries Despatch Association (ILDA), a centralized interlibrary loan service that takes requests from students and professors at regional universities and procures the articles and books they need from an international list of libraries. The reader is usually with Miss Barbara Smith, a young University graduate who is working in the Location department, typing up requests and compiling responses. One of her co-locators, Mrs. Warren, is everything you would hope your colleagues not to be: gossipy, loud, both offensive and easily offended, and possessing of a grating laugh that she spurts out at all times, whether it is appropriate or not. In fact, no one in the library seems to care much for Mrs. Warren. She snoops about when Mark Allan (the microfilm and photostat man) and Mrs. Bridgewater (who does the accounts) have a workplace romance. She butts in when Barbara tries to get some work on her romance novel done during work hours. She insults people in the cafeteria and teases the young typists until they cry. No one would be sad at all were she to leave the library all together, but everyone is rather surprised when she shows up dead, stuffed into a bag of books scheduled for deposit in the basement stacks.

In classic mystery style, everyone has a motive and no one really has an alibi -- one of the library workers has to have been the killer, but as the detectives unravel a complicated tangle of insults, slights, drug smuggling, eccentric personalities, suspicious conversations and worthy war records the trail to the real killer becomes more and more murky.

And then another librarian is murdered.

The real mystery in this mystery is not that hard to figure out, and it quickly becomes more of a psychological study of the characters -- particularly Barabara Smith, the naive romance writer, and Mark Allan, the dashing ex-soldier who handles microfilm on the 4th floor. That isn't a bad thing, though -- for a book I bought based on its title, it really is a well-written and complex mystery novel. Plus the chapter headings all come from Dewey's original classification system ("Chapter one: Male and Female Employees, 647.22 & 647.23," "Chapter two: Influence of Sex, 615.55."). What librarian could resist that?

And now for some library-appropriate quotes:

Do you catalogue your kisses, Mr. Allan? Or do you perhaps just make photostats of them for future reference?

"Surely," said Mark gravely, coming into the room, "the work of the department must go on. Death may come and death may go, but libraries, one presumes, go on for ever."

"Did I never tell you I was a schoolmaster? Quite a good one, too, though I am not a very patient man... I taught physics. I didn't mind the boys, but I didn't like my colleagues, so I became a librarian instead, and don't care much for my colleagues either. Still, one has more privacy."