If you think this going to be a cute cozy mystery set in a bookshop ( I’m partial to stories set in libraries and bookshops), just take a look at that cover (which I love, by the way)! I admit, it was nothing like I was expecting. I was expecting it to be a murder mystery, or crime novel. But it’s not really. It was so layered. It’s got this power about it, but also this humour, it’s creepy and unsettling and beautiful to read.

I felt Alice’s exploration of grief, and depression and mental health is an excellent piece of writing. Sensitive but raw. It's told through a dual point of view, which worked extremely well - it highlighted the contrasting motivations & attitudes of the two narrators, and I felt like I was really inside the characters' heads. Laura was equally not my favorite character. She was hard to like. Her life was spiraling, too, and she did take some of the parts of her life for granted, how easy they were, even though her life wasn't easy. When she arrives in Roaches failing bookstore, tasked with bringing life into the dying business, she brings a sense of light with her that's unfamiliar but intriguing. But in that light, Roach sees a little glimmer of dark - something she can connect with and soon she is obsessed with finding the broken parts of Laura, making her realise they'd be best friends ... If only Laura would look at her. Wigan learns of the collaborator's death only when in the end the killer confesses to the second crime (which he does spontaneously, in fact Wigan only investigates the first murder), inconceivable!When Sergeant Wigan stops to escort a swaying reveler home at the end of his later shift, he is spun a tale of the ups and downs of a life spent collecting and selling rare books. His new companion, Michael Fisk, has been celebrating the acquisition of a signed copy of Keats's Endymion, and a trip to Fisk's library is enough to convince Wigan to begin his own collection. After developing a love for antiquarian books and a friendship with Fisk, Wigan is called upon by the C.I.D. when tragedy strikes and Fisk is found murdered in his library. Everything that happens in this story is set off by booze, booze and more booze. It seems none of the people who work in Spines is having one original thought without getting very drunk first. Which is a pity because there is a lot going on here. We get to know Roach and Laura pretty well and although they are both not very nice persons, you cannot help but feel for them sometimes. I liked Roach at first, I think it really affected her, the way Laura treated her. It became an obsession to show Laura that they could become friends, that they shared a common interest although at two different polars of the same spectrum. Some of her decisions were extremely ill advised and she took on a different identity, someone more than Roach, more confidence, more outspoken, a person she wanted to be. It didn’t really work for her though, she should’ve given Laura the two-finger sign and moved on. You should always be yourself. According to Martin Edwards in the Introduction to this reprint, original copies of the novel are much sought after and the story has cult status among book lovers. Surely that can only be because of the huge amounts of information on book collecting, bookselling and arcane books which it contains, since it could hardly be said to have appeal for lovers of stylish writing, tight plotting and solid detective investigation. I gave 3 stars because Wigan is a pleasant main role character and the mystery, on the whole, is interesting since there are several suspicious characters and until the end you can't guess who really could be the murderer.

Roach feels Laura is as interested in the morbid and macabre as she is even though Laura’s contempt for Roach is obvious but she is determined to know everything about her life regardless of the consequences.It's a creepy story in places and the end is fitting. I loved the writing but sometimes I got a bit nauseous from reading about the huge amounts of alcohol that’s consumed. It is a bit of a slow-burn, but the creeping uncertainty that pervades every inch of both Laura and Roach’s POV really brought a sense of depth and realism to their characters, and the cat and mouse game that unfolds between them. For a while there I wasn’t sure how things would end but I couldn’t look away from the cringey disaster that began hurtling towards us as both their lives (and obsessions) began spiralling out of control. First published in 1956 it’s no surprise that some would find it ‘dated’. I happen to love ‘dated’, the language especially. The author worked for a time as a policeman so the details of police procedures and office politics seem convincing. Unfortunately, as a write Bernard Farmer is plodding and clumsy. He explains, he summarizes, he tells us what to think. This book has been praised for its plotting, but I found many of the twists and turns wildly improbable, especially when supernatural elements come to be involved. The climactic scene of confession is just ridiculous.