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A Mobile Library Mystery
by Ian Sansom
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?
"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." - Publishers Weekly
"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
"We criticized Sansom’s last outing (Mr. Dixon Disappears, 2007) for its lack of plotting chops...here, crime takes a backseat to the characters, and the problem is solved....hilarious." - Booklist
This information about The Book Stops Here was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ian Sansom is a regular contributor to The Guardian and The London Review of Books. He lives in Northern Ireland. In addition to the Mobile Library series he is the author of The Truth About Babies: From A-Z (2002), Ring Road (2004), The Case of the Missing Books (2006), Mr Dixon Disappears (2006), The Delegates' Choice (2007) (US Title - The Book Stops Here), Paper: An Elegy (2012) and The Norfolk Mystery (2013).
He studied at both Oxford and Cambridge where he was a fellow of Emmanuel College. He is a professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick and teaches in its Writing Program.
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