Bodies in a Bookshop

by Ruthven Todd and R.T. Campbell

Book Overview

When botanist Max Boyle ventures into a little shop around the corner from London's Tottenham Court Road, he's delighted by the bibliophile treasures he finds. But he's less charmed by the two corpses... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486247201
• ISBN13: 9780486247205
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Amusing and Entertaining Characters. Enjoyable mystery story

I can be frequently found in bookstores, but I have never encountered a dead body. Botanist Max Boyle finds not one, but two bodies in a small, musty bookstore on a small side street off Totenham Court Road.Max Boyle is soon joined by two polar opposites: the irascible Professor John Stubbs, a Scottish botanist with a penchant for solving murders, and their old acquaintance, the reserved (and often underestimated) Chief Inspector Reginald F. Bishop of Scotland Yard. Professor Stubbs reminded me of Colin Dexter's brilliant, and sometimes quarrelsome, Inspector Morse. Both Stubbs and Morse solve mysteries by jumping to conclusions, one after another, until reaching the final, correct solution. Those around them often have difficulty keeping up with their shifting focus. Neither Morse nor Stubbs could imagine a day without one or more visits to nearby pubs; draft beer is essential for good deductive efforts."Bodies in a Bookshop", written in 1946, is entertaining and amusing. Boyle says early on: The trouble with bookstores is that they are as bad as pubs. You start with one and you drift to another, and before you know where you are you are on a gigantic book-binge.Ellery Queen offers better constructed deductive mysteries. P.D. James and Colin Dexter are more literate. Robert Van Gulik's Judge Dee's mysteries are more exotic and G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries are more moralistic. Nonetheless, "Bodies in a Bookshop" makes good reading and I am thankful that Dover has republished this nearly forgotten book. Apparently "Bodies in a Bookshop" is only one of several stories involving Boyle, Stubbs, and Bishop. I look forward to finding others works by R. T. Campbell.R.T. Campbell was the pen name of Scottish poet, scholar, art critic and fantasy novelist Ruthven Campbell Todd (1914-1978). His detective stories were written in a short period in the 1940s.

A wittily written "locked room" mystery for book lovers.

For those who can never own enough books, R.T. Campbell's 1946 Bodies in a Bookshop is, to use a weary phrase, a "must read." It is a delightful, droll murder mystery. Under the pen-name R.T. Campbell, Ruthven Campbell Todd wrote several detective novels that follow the escapades of the witty botanist Professor Stubbs who always seems willing to resolve the toughest murders. In Bodies in a Bookshop, while browsing many several secondhand bookstores, Stubbs' assistant stumbles across a locked room filled with gas and two dead bodies. How were these men murdered? Enter the obstreperous Professor Stubbs who becomes involved in trying to solve this "locked room" mystery. The story is well written and the characters are highly amusing. I strongly recommend this book as well as Campbell's 1945 Professor Stubbs novel Unholy Dying.