A disclosure before I write this review. I know these guys. They are good friends and their bookshop is my local. I love the shop, I love the staff, and I love them. They are terrifically supportive of local writers. That makes writing an honest review of The Bookshop Detectives either very difficult or absolutely lovely and, (well, you can guess what is coming as I don’t review books I don’t like) this is one hundred percent the latter. It’s terrific.
‘Write what you know’ is advice often given to authors, and if you happen to be a cheerful pair of ex-coppers living in a small town and running a bookshop with quirky customers and a quirkier dog, well, you’ve hit the jackpot. The action relies on the past careers of Lou and Gareth (or characters Eloise and Garth) in England, where their police training and contacts become very useful in little Havelock North, New Zealand. A mysterious package starts them investigating an old missing person story, and the long fingers of a criminal creep from an English prison over the sea. There is a circus in town, and a clock ticking – a countdown to a massive book launch of a superstar – that gives you the panic of one of those garden design TV programmes where the family will come home in three hours and the patio is not yet painted.
But the thing that lifts the story – apart from a plot that keeps you guessing, the well-realised setting and characters drawn on real people (even I get name dropped) –is the chemistry between Eloise and Garth.
I don’t know if Lou and Gareth quite realise what they have done here when they decided to write a chapter each, each from their own point of view, but regularly giving the other the best lines. After years of marriage they appear still slightly perplexed at the other’s different way of interacting with the world, but the combined pairing of Eloise and Garth transcends into the classic. Think Starsky & Hutch, Hot Fuzz, Shrek & Donkey, Snoopy & Woodstock, Thelma & Louise etc etc. In the pairing, there lies the love.
Certainly the book is already a smash hit with the locals, and the ‘write what you know’ element gives an authenticity that makes it accessible anywhere.
Did I mention Stevie?
Cristina Sanders' blog 