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Cliff Janeway #3
A promessa do livreiro
Uma velha senhora, Josephine Gallant, toma conhecimento de que Cliff Janeway, amante de livros e investigador, acabou de adquirir em leilão a primeira edição, assinada, de uma obra do lendário explorador e aventureiro inglês Richard Burton, ele próprio um linguista e tradutor do século XIX. O livro é um clássico, relatando a viagem de Burton, disfarçado de muçulmano, às cidades proibidas de Medina e de Meca. A casa leiloeira é uma firma digna de confiança, mas a proveniência do livro é duvidosa e Josephine está certa de que a obra pertence à sua família e lhe fora roubada oitenta anos antes. Como prova, entrega a Janeway uma primeira edição de Burton, autografada. Dias depois, uma mulher é assassinada por causa do livro. Outras três pessoas parecem estar ligadas ao crime: um brutamontes sem apelido, um vencedor do prémio Pulitzer e uma bela advogada. Durante a investigação, surge outro enigma: por que razão Richard Burton teria estado durante três meses no interior dos Estados Unidos, pouco antes da Guerra Civil? Terá sido um espião?
344 pages, Paperback
First published March 9, 2004
83 people are currently reading
1201 people want to read
About the author
John Dunning
63 books320 followersJohn Dunning was an American writer of non-fiction and detective fiction. He was known for his reference books on old-time radio and his series of mysteries featuring Denver bookseller and ex-policeman Cliff Janeway.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 297 reviews
April 1, 2016
The man said, "So we have a mystery here as well as a valuable book," and it all began then. Its roots went back to another time, when Richard Francis Burton met his greatest admirer and then set off on a secret journey, deep into the troubled American South. Because of that trip a friend of mine died. An old woman found peace, a good man lost everything, and I rediscovered myself on my continuing journey across the timeless, infinite world of books.
Cliff Janeway, the brawling bookseller, ex-cop turned private investigator when he is not hunting for rare and expensive books, is back with a fifty grand paycheck from his last case. The best investment he can think of for the unexpected windfall is to buy a couple of 19th century first editions by Richard Francis Burton. Few people around the world are ready to pay this kind of money for old paper, so Janeway enjoys a few days of local fame on the radio and TV circuits, followed by several weeks of phone calls from all kinds of freaks and crooks trying to sell him fakes. One of those calls though leads up to the third criminal case for the Bookman.
From his bookstore in Denver, to the suburbs of Baltimore then down south to the port of Charleston, Janeway is tracking the theft of a unique collection of Burton first editions that took place eight decades ago, all because of a promise he makes by the death bed of a very old lady. One may think that 80 years is more than enough time for the tracks to get cold and for all the clues to disappear, yet somebody is apparently ready to kill to preserve the secret of the missing books. Among the suspects are a cranky author with writer's block and a pair of second hand booksellers with ties to the mob.
Cliff Janeway has a strong sense of honour and integrity, but he is also in the chase for personal reasons, mostly having to do with collector fever, like a bloodhound catching the scent of prey. And what a prey this is - one of the most controversial and intriguing personalities of Victorian England, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton: explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer, and diplomat. Famous for travelling incognito to Mecca and Medina, for fighting over with Speke over who first discovered first the source of the Nile, indecent translator of Kama Sutra, The Arabian Nights and other Oriental sex manuals, Burton did manage to include in his busy schedule a trip to America right before the start of the Civil War, to meet with the Mormon leaders and to cross the praerie. Dunning focuses on the missing three months from the accounts of Burton's visit to America, and the historical mystery manages to often dominate the criminal case Janeway is building, although the two will probably prove to be related in the end.
He was one of those brilliant swashbuckling wizards who comes along rarely, who understands life and writes exactly what he sees without pandering to rules of propriety or knuckling under to religious tyranny. His kind does not have an easy life. He is resented and shunned by churches and genteel society; if he's lucky, he may escape being burned at the stake. In Burton's case, he was victimized after death by his pious, narrow-minded Roman Catholic wife. Lady Isabel torched his work, burning forty years of unpublished manuscripts, journals, and notes in her mindless determination to purify his image.
This is why I am not religious.
John Dunning talks about books in much the same way Dick Francis talks about his beloved horses and the racing world. He talks about the subject professionally and passionately, with many secret details about the publishing secret clues on the first editions he sells and with intriguing bits of trivia from the life of Burton. In another parallel with Francis, Janeway is cast in the role of the quiet, but strong career man who confronts a band of ruthless thugs, yet finds time for a little romance along the route. A new woman enters into his life, although holding on to her proves to be a tricky job when Cliff tries to play the protective, dominating male and her feminist hackles rise to the ceiling.
I remembered half a dozen moments in my life, crossroads where everything would be different if I had gone the other way. I could tick them off in no particular order. When I became a cop. When I stopped being a cop. When I doscovered Hemingway and Fowles and those three lovely books by Maugham, all in the same month. When I became a bookseller. When I found, won, and lost an unforgettable woman. Now this. Suddenly my world was shaken. Everything in it was different.
You gotta love a guy who mentions among the defining moments of his life the books he read before he comes to the subject of his love life. Of course, Janeway can also boast of his young thug life on the streets of Denver and of his hardboiled police experience when it comes to dealing with the criminal underworld, but for me the ultimate fascination with the Bookman series remains in the literary references and in the discovery of new reading subjects for my own shelves:
... there are many quieter thrills in the book world. The bottomless nature of it. The certainty of surprise, even for a specialist. The sudden enlightenment, the pockets of history that can open without warning and turn a bookman towards new fields of passionate interest. Wasn't that what had just happened with me and Richard Burton?
For example, in mentioning the upheaval brought by the internet and by quick referencing tools to the industry of selling rare and second hand books, Janeway insists on the continuing relevance of the human insight and of the old fashioned methods of study:
A book is a mirror. If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out. That was written two centuries ago by a German wit named Lichtenberg, but I think the same applies today to a computer screen.
From this epigram, I went myself to the quick wikipedia reference library and discovered that Lichtenberg was as famous in his own way as Burton, although in the field of experimental physics and skeptical thinking rather than for adventuring and translating risque ancient tomes. I now have another name to add to my ever increasing wishlist of authors and books:
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1 July 1742 – 24 February 1799) was a German scientist, satirist, and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany. Today, he is remembered for his posthumously published notebooks, which he himself called Sudelbücher, a description modelled on the English bookkeeping term "scrapbooks", and for his discovery of the strange tree-like electrical discharge patterns now called Lichtenberg figures. [...]Arthur Schopenhauer admired Lichtenberg greatly for what he had written in his notebooks. He called Lichtenberg one of those who "think ... for their own instruction", who are "genuine 'thinkers for themselves' in both senses of the words". Other admirers of Lichtenberg's notebooks include Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Lichtenberg is not read by many outside Germany. Leo Tolstoy held Lichtenberg's writings in high esteem, expressing his perplexity of "why the Germans of the present day neglect this writer so much." [...] In the spirit of enlightenment, he strove to educate the common people to use logic, wit and the power of their own senses.
... and that's the way shelves are populated with books: from the Bookman to Burton to Lichtenberg to Wittgentstein to who knows where else. It's what makes reading and book collecting interesting and why I will read the next Cliff Janeway mystery.
June 28, 2023
I got into this series years ago, and really enjoyed the character of Cliff Janeway. How can you not love the idea of a cop-turned rare book dealer? These series first came out in the 1990’s. So, I guess now they would be considered classic.
The good news is that the series was re-released by Scribner in the early 2000’s so that new readers could be introduced to him. And, I was one of those new readers that had that experience.
This was my second novel, even though it is the 3rd in the series. You can read it as a stand-alone.
This one I found at another Little Free Library. I am now bringing my review to Goodreads.
Before I go into the premise of this story, I want to share a brief comment on the author.
I love his writing style. He shows great knowledge of what it seems to be a cop solving murders concerning valuable objects, such as rare books. Yet, on another level, the text and history of the books he is looking for (and the lives of the famous authors that are brought up in the books he is looking for) serve as both clues, red herrings, and solutions…which create creative twists to his stories. I admire the way he does this!
Premise: Cliff Janeway has been tasked with finding a lost collection of books by famed explorer Richard Burton (no not the actor). In addition to the mystery of the collection, there is a murder to be solved.
The author is brilliant at hiding the clues in plain sight and just waiting for the reader to connect the dots. (It took me a few extra moments!)
Wonderful, cozy, page-turning, twisty, mystery.
The good news is that the series was re-released by Scribner in the early 2000’s so that new readers could be introduced to him. And, I was one of those new readers that had that experience.
This was my second novel, even though it is the 3rd in the series. You can read it as a stand-alone.
This one I found at another Little Free Library. I am now bringing my review to Goodreads.
Before I go into the premise of this story, I want to share a brief comment on the author.
I love his writing style. He shows great knowledge of what it seems to be a cop solving murders concerning valuable objects, such as rare books. Yet, on another level, the text and history of the books he is looking for (and the lives of the famous authors that are brought up in the books he is looking for) serve as both clues, red herrings, and solutions…which create creative twists to his stories. I admire the way he does this!
Premise: Cliff Janeway has been tasked with finding a lost collection of books by famed explorer Richard Burton (no not the actor). In addition to the mystery of the collection, there is a murder to be solved.
The author is brilliant at hiding the clues in plain sight and just waiting for the reader to connect the dots. (It took me a few extra moments!)
Wonderful, cozy, page-turning, twisty, mystery.
October 22, 2012
John Dunning's Cliff Janeway series ranks among my top favorites in mystery/detective series. When I think of Dunning an inevitable comparison takes place in my little grey cells: if you like Dick Francis you will love John Dunning. Why the comparison? What I often find delightful in fiction is not just the story itself; what delights is the acquisition of knowledge on a particular subject. Dick Francis in addition to handing his readers a well crafted mystery delights his readers with his thorough examination of the horse racing world. There is no doubt that when one thinks of horse racing, one thinks of Dick Francis. John Dunning accomplishes the same by delivering to his readers a thorough insider's knowledge of the art of collecting books. When one thinks of antiquarian books; when one thinks of book scouts; when one thinks of avid book collectors, book scams, and book shops across this great nation: one thinks of John Dunning.
When one stumbles across a writer who not only delivers a great story but also infuses one with knowledge than this writer has the power to influence one's life personally. For example: it was due to Ayn Rand's novels that my philosophical perspective on the world and my life in it changed. In the case of John Dunning I became engrossed in book collecting: how can one forget an author when my glass encased book cases, filled with signed first editions of my favorite authors, are filled to the brim as a direct result of reading Booked To Die.
John Dunning is not a man of the computer age. His is a world of typewriters. He says: "Unlike a computer, a great old manual typewriter was an honest machine. You did your work, it did its work." Is it any wonder than that his sentences are among the best crafted? No room for mistakes. Syntax, clauses, and style fuse together in a Dunning book with absolute clarity. Dunning is a writer that appeals to the intellect while simultaneously attracting mystery lovers with his behind-the-scenes look at the world of books: the moral and ethical circumstances that drive any great mystery, including death.
Cliff Janeway, our hero, is in many ways a reflection of the writer. Here the comparison with Dick Francis continues. Where Francis writes about the Queen's sport (horse racing) as a result of having spent a good deal of his life as a jockey himself, Dunning writes about books as a result of having owned his own book store in Denver. Where Francis writes about the racing world in England where he spent his jockey years, Dunning's protagonist Cliff Janeway, a former cop, owns a book store in Denver as well. The adage that one write "about what one knows" is never more true with these two writers. Francis's heroes are a reflection of the writer himself: in the case of Francis we empathize with a thoroughly honorable, ethical and objective human being and in the case of Dunning we face our own conflicts through a conflicted hero not averse to violence but compelled by a proper moral ethic that guides the hero through his various delimmas. As with Dunning who struggled with ADD, being a poor student, and taking the hard road to his own calling, so does Janeway struggle with authority, with finding his true calling as one reads about a cop turned book collector in the Cliff Janeway novels.
And finally I have to wonder about the formula in play here. Did Dunning stumble upon the perfect subject inadvertently or did it come about as a reflection of his own life? Let's face it, what more compelling subject matter for a mystery/detective series could have been chosen than to appeal to the reader himself: it is our love of reading, our love of books that draws us to these pages. And in the case of Dunning, our satisfaction is doubled because what we are reading about is the very thing from which we draw our pleasure: the world of books.
As with all my series reviews, if you've read this review of the Cliff Janeway series, you've read 'em all.
When one stumbles across a writer who not only delivers a great story but also infuses one with knowledge than this writer has the power to influence one's life personally. For example: it was due to Ayn Rand's novels that my philosophical perspective on the world and my life in it changed. In the case of John Dunning I became engrossed in book collecting: how can one forget an author when my glass encased book cases, filled with signed first editions of my favorite authors, are filled to the brim as a direct result of reading Booked To Die.
John Dunning is not a man of the computer age. His is a world of typewriters. He says: "Unlike a computer, a great old manual typewriter was an honest machine. You did your work, it did its work." Is it any wonder than that his sentences are among the best crafted? No room for mistakes. Syntax, clauses, and style fuse together in a Dunning book with absolute clarity. Dunning is a writer that appeals to the intellect while simultaneously attracting mystery lovers with his behind-the-scenes look at the world of books: the moral and ethical circumstances that drive any great mystery, including death.
Cliff Janeway, our hero, is in many ways a reflection of the writer. Here the comparison with Dick Francis continues. Where Francis writes about the Queen's sport (horse racing) as a result of having spent a good deal of his life as a jockey himself, Dunning writes about books as a result of having owned his own book store in Denver. Where Francis writes about the racing world in England where he spent his jockey years, Dunning's protagonist Cliff Janeway, a former cop, owns a book store in Denver as well. The adage that one write "about what one knows" is never more true with these two writers. Francis's heroes are a reflection of the writer himself: in the case of Francis we empathize with a thoroughly honorable, ethical and objective human being and in the case of Dunning we face our own conflicts through a conflicted hero not averse to violence but compelled by a proper moral ethic that guides the hero through his various delimmas. As with Dunning who struggled with ADD, being a poor student, and taking the hard road to his own calling, so does Janeway struggle with authority, with finding his true calling as one reads about a cop turned book collector in the Cliff Janeway novels.
And finally I have to wonder about the formula in play here. Did Dunning stumble upon the perfect subject inadvertently or did it come about as a reflection of his own life? Let's face it, what more compelling subject matter for a mystery/detective series could have been chosen than to appeal to the reader himself: it is our love of reading, our love of books that draws us to these pages. And in the case of Dunning, our satisfaction is doubled because what we are reading about is the very thing from which we draw our pleasure: the world of books.
As with all my series reviews, if you've read this review of the Cliff Janeway series, you've read 'em all.
April 28, 2011
What more can you want? Yes, I am hooked on this series, and this one is a masterpiece. Engrossing characters from the very beginning, a book hunt over several states, a plot involving flashbacks to the life of the 19th century adventurer and explorer, Richard Burton, and a resolution of the plot that makes complete sense. Concisely written.
It sent me to the library to find Fawn Brodie's biography of Richard Burton. Several unforgettable "secondary" characters remain in my mind - Denise and Mike Ralston, Josephine Gallant, and Koko Bujak. But as always with Dunning, every character is vivid and every scene is beautifully imagined.
Civil War buffs will find this one especially interesting. Its pictures of a journey through the wilds of the South in the 1860s is accurate and unforgettable.
Favorite imaginary quote from Burton: "There were many ultrasecessionists on hand...Charlie, these fools are having the time of their lives. Strutting like cocks in a barnyard...They have no idea how quickly the world is turning against state-sponsored slavery, and how difficult it will soon be for them to function with that as their calling card. They can't imagine how many of their boys will die for their foolish pride."
Those who follow Victorian adventurers and know who Burton is - well, you have to read it.
Bibliophiles will appreciate the comparison of the book world in 1987 to the internet-dominated book world of today...not always to the advantage of the latter.
Favorite quote: "A book is a mirror. If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out." - Lichtenberg, quoted by Dunning.
Also - "You can't talk logic to madmen and you can't prevent a war if only one side is interested in doing that."
It sent me to the library to find Fawn Brodie's biography of Richard Burton. Several unforgettable "secondary" characters remain in my mind - Denise and Mike Ralston, Josephine Gallant, and Koko Bujak. But as always with Dunning, every character is vivid and every scene is beautifully imagined.
Civil War buffs will find this one especially interesting. Its pictures of a journey through the wilds of the South in the 1860s is accurate and unforgettable.
Favorite imaginary quote from Burton: "There were many ultrasecessionists on hand...Charlie, these fools are having the time of their lives. Strutting like cocks in a barnyard...They have no idea how quickly the world is turning against state-sponsored slavery, and how difficult it will soon be for them to function with that as their calling card. They can't imagine how many of their boys will die for their foolish pride."
Those who follow Victorian adventurers and know who Burton is - well, you have to read it.
Bibliophiles will appreciate the comparison of the book world in 1987 to the internet-dominated book world of today...not always to the advantage of the latter.
Favorite quote: "A book is a mirror. If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out." - Lichtenberg, quoted by Dunning.
Also - "You can't talk logic to madmen and you can't prevent a war if only one side is interested in doing that."
January 28, 2013
These books are so interesting because they not only tell a good mystery story, they are full of fascinating information about book collecting. This one goes even farther and includes even more information about the explorer/author Richard Burton (not the actor!) as Cliff Janeway and associates search for a stolen original collection of Burton's books and try to solve the mystery of Burton's connection with the American Civil War. A really good story!!
May 26, 2024
In each of these books I've read so far, I've learned something I didn't know about the world of books. And there's a mystery too! :)
October 17, 2008
Books by John Dunning are a real treat because they not only provide a great story, they are also informative. The Bookman's Promise is equal parts of historical novel, book collectors' guide, and who-dunnit that once again features our favorite cop turned bookman, Cliff Janeway.
In this offering Dunning presents his readers with the premise that Sir Richard Burton (no not Liz's ex) whose achievements included extensive exploration into the vast unknown, the discovery of the headwaters of the Nile, penning several books about his feats as well as translating the words of others for our pleasure (if you have you read and enjoyed "The Arabian Nights" thank Mr. Burton) also visited our American South three months before the eruption of the Civil War and was in some way instrumental in the outbreak. Not only that, Burton supposedly kept a journal recounting his "southern experience" and someone is willing to kill to possess this handwritten and outrageously valuable volume.
Janeways pursuit of the undiscovered diary takes him out of the confines of his Denver bookstore as he travels to the East Coast and on to Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina encountering a plethora of colorful characters along the way.
"Promise" is not as engrossing as Dunning's previous offerings, "Booked to Die" and "Bookman's Wake" which I read many years ago; however, it still manages to captivate the imagination and will leave more than one reader (including myself) scrambling to the library to find out more about the life of Sir Richard Burton. 3 1/2 stars
In this offering Dunning presents his readers with the premise that Sir Richard Burton (no not Liz's ex) whose achievements included extensive exploration into the vast unknown, the discovery of the headwaters of the Nile, penning several books about his feats as well as translating the words of others for our pleasure (if you have you read and enjoyed "The Arabian Nights" thank Mr. Burton) also visited our American South three months before the eruption of the Civil War and was in some way instrumental in the outbreak. Not only that, Burton supposedly kept a journal recounting his "southern experience" and someone is willing to kill to possess this handwritten and outrageously valuable volume.
Janeways pursuit of the undiscovered diary takes him out of the confines of his Denver bookstore as he travels to the East Coast and on to Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina encountering a plethora of colorful characters along the way.
"Promise" is not as engrossing as Dunning's previous offerings, "Booked to Die" and "Bookman's Wake" which I read many years ago; however, it still manages to captivate the imagination and will leave more than one reader (including myself) scrambling to the library to find out more about the life of Sir Richard Burton. 3 1/2 stars
November 21, 2011
The Bookman’s Promise is the 3rd in John Dunning’s Cliff Janeway series. With the windfall cash Cliff has from the Grayson business (see The Bookman’s Wake), he decides to spend some serious money on a single book. He becomes interested in the work of renowned 19th century British explorer, Sir Richard Burton, and manages to spend $30,000 on a signed copy of Pilgrimage. Soon, he is contacted by Josephine Gallant, granddaughter of that book’s former owner, and Cliff finds himself making her a promise on her deathbed. Murder, violence and arson follow. Cliff hooks up with a young lawyer and a librarian in an endeavour to track down some unique books, a search that takes them to Baltimore, Charleston and Charlotte. Once again, Dunning gives us a great plot with a few interesting twists, characters that have the ability to surprise the reader and, of course, tidbits on rare books and the antics of unscrupulous book dealers. As well as this, he touches on hypnotism, biographers and bibliographers, and he gives the reader quite a dose of the Civil War. I look forward to the next in the series, The Sign of the Book.
March 13, 2008
Third in the Cliff Janeway series, like its predecessors this is a well written detective novel that combines many elements of the classic hardboiled genre with a love for the world of rare and used books, and is set in the time period just before the Internet emerged to change not only the way the rare book industry worked but social interactions in the society at large as well. This installment has our clever (love his sense of humor) ex-cop hero involved in a deadly search for a long lost journal of the great 19th century explorer Richard Burton (this is not the guy who was married to Liz Taylor, for those uninterested in 19th century British Empire studies). Includes a great historical fiction subplot set in the pre-Civil War South.
September 27, 2020
PROTAGONIST: Cliff Janeway, bookstore owner
SETTING: Denver and Charleston, SC
SERIES: #3
RATING: 4.0
WHY: Cliff Janeway is a bookshop owner in Denver. He has long had a fascination with the author and explorer Sir Richard Burton. Two of his most valued acquisitions are pristine copies of Burton's work. However, when an old woman comes into his shop and claims that the books are not rightfully his, Janeway decides to determine their true provenance. The fact that he was at one time a cop helps him determine what to do. What he finds is murder, love and book intrigue. In this series, I always find the details around book collecting to be very interesting. But I also find that (to me), the character of Janeway doesn't feel authentic. He's ready to haul off against evil doers, and his relationship with a new love interest seems oddly quaint.
SETTING: Denver and Charleston, SC
SERIES: #3
RATING: 4.0
WHY: Cliff Janeway is a bookshop owner in Denver. He has long had a fascination with the author and explorer Sir Richard Burton. Two of his most valued acquisitions are pristine copies of Burton's work. However, when an old woman comes into his shop and claims that the books are not rightfully his, Janeway decides to determine their true provenance. The fact that he was at one time a cop helps him determine what to do. What he finds is murder, love and book intrigue. In this series, I always find the details around book collecting to be very interesting. But I also find that (to me), the character of Janeway doesn't feel authentic. He's ready to haul off against evil doers, and his relationship with a new love interest seems oddly quaint.
February 1, 2010
I like Cliff Janeway more and more all the time. Perhaps I'm a bit raw from reading Judgment Ridge, but I felt the book would have been just as good if not better without the murder element. You CAN have mysteries without murders - can't you? Still, I enjoyed the embedded Civil War intrigue and, as always, the fascinating glimpse into the world of book scouts and dealers. Makes me think I have to stop writing in the margins!
June 15, 2021
This story begins when Cliff Janeway appears on a radio program and talks about a rare book that he bought at an auction in Boston. He paid more than $29,000 for a copy of Pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca by Richard Burton. After his appearance, he hears from all sorts of people including those who want to sell him items by the actor Richard Burton. One of the calls, which he thought came from just one more nut, came from Josephine Gallant who tells him that the book was stolen from her family.
When Mrs. Gallant - nearly blind, over 90, and dying - comes to see him in Denver, Cliff begins to believe her story but wonders what he can do to find a book collection that has been missing for more than 80 years. Mrs. Gallant is befriended by a couple while she's in Denver and dies in their home. Just days later, the woman in the couple is found to have been smothered to death and her husband is the prime suspect. Cliff is determined to find her killer and to keep his promise to Mrs. Gallant to find her family's missing collection of Burton's books.
As Cliff investigates, we get a look into the world of book collecting as we see his friend Judge Lee Huxley and a pair of fourth generation book collectors in Baltimore. We meet Erin d'Angelo who is a mentee of the judge and Cliff''s new love interest. We also meet Koko Bujak who is a retired librarian who has hours of tape documenting Mrs. Gallant's life and a pair of rangers at Fort Sumter who are also fans of Richard Burton.
Woven through this whole story is Richard F. Burton who was a master linguist, soldier, spy, explorer and chronicler of his travels who was an immensely prolific author and a very important nineteenth-century character. Although he wrote about everything, there is one three-month period of his life that is missing. He traveled through the American South just before the Civil War with Charles Warren, the man who amassed the large collection of Burton's works that is the object of Cliff's hunt.
I really enjoyed the way the story was written. It is a memoir written after the time when Cliff tracked down the collection, hunted for a killer, and learned more about himself as a book collector. It includes a section about that missing three month period garnered from Mrs. Gallant's memories of what her grandfather told her and her own reading of the missing journal.
This book is the third in a five-book series. I want to know more about the past that is just briefly referred to in this one. He mentions leaving the police force under something of a cloud but I want to know more about Cliff and his transition from detective to bookseller and book collector.
When Mrs. Gallant - nearly blind, over 90, and dying - comes to see him in Denver, Cliff begins to believe her story but wonders what he can do to find a book collection that has been missing for more than 80 years. Mrs. Gallant is befriended by a couple while she's in Denver and dies in their home. Just days later, the woman in the couple is found to have been smothered to death and her husband is the prime suspect. Cliff is determined to find her killer and to keep his promise to Mrs. Gallant to find her family's missing collection of Burton's books.
As Cliff investigates, we get a look into the world of book collecting as we see his friend Judge Lee Huxley and a pair of fourth generation book collectors in Baltimore. We meet Erin d'Angelo who is a mentee of the judge and Cliff''s new love interest. We also meet Koko Bujak who is a retired librarian who has hours of tape documenting Mrs. Gallant's life and a pair of rangers at Fort Sumter who are also fans of Richard Burton.
Woven through this whole story is Richard F. Burton who was a master linguist, soldier, spy, explorer and chronicler of his travels who was an immensely prolific author and a very important nineteenth-century character. Although he wrote about everything, there is one three-month period of his life that is missing. He traveled through the American South just before the Civil War with Charles Warren, the man who amassed the large collection of Burton's works that is the object of Cliff's hunt.
I really enjoyed the way the story was written. It is a memoir written after the time when Cliff tracked down the collection, hunted for a killer, and learned more about himself as a book collector. It includes a section about that missing three month period garnered from Mrs. Gallant's memories of what her grandfather told her and her own reading of the missing journal.
This book is the third in a five-book series. I want to know more about the past that is just briefly referred to in this one. He mentions leaving the police force under something of a cloud but I want to know more about Cliff and his transition from detective to bookseller and book collector.
May 27, 2019
“The Bookman’s Promise”. In the third Cliff Janeway series, a 90year old Josephine Gallant pursues Janeway when she hears he has just returned from an auction with a signed first edition by the legendary nineteenth-century explorer Richard Frances Burton. She pursues the former Denver cop, turned rare bookseller, to help her recover a rare book collection that once belonged to her grandfather, then since passed down to his daughter Josephine. When they fell on hard times, Josephine’s mother sold it to a rare bookstore, not knowing they were being robbed. Janeway anxious to be a cop again, goes to Baltimore where he knows the collection may be broken down and sold to different collectors. We meet all the characters he comes in contact with. All are not honest. There is a murder and the best part is we hear of the Richard Frances Burton adventure during the Civil War. What a guy!
March 12, 2022
This is the third book in the series and I'm still loving it. I'll be moving onto the next book as soon as I can and I hope the main character's love life improves as there does seem to be a chance of that at the end of this book.
October 30, 2019
Glad I own this one and can loan it out to others who like a bookish murder mystery. :)
May 19, 2023
Not my favorite so far, but I plan on continuing with the series.
October 25, 2019
I thought this was a well written, interesting book. I learned a fair amount about Richard Burton and his adventures, and of course about the book business. There is a fair amount of intrigue here as well. All in all, everything you could ask for.
November 30, 2021
Fun read! Now I want to read the others in the series!
March 31, 2024
.
THE BOOKMAN'S PROMISE
by John Dunning, pub. 2004.
Book 3 of the Cliff Janeway series, a former Denver homicide detective is now a book dealer in first editions and rare books.
.
THE STORY
At auction Janeway bought a signed three volume first edition by the legendary British author and explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821 to 1890). The book is a true classic, telling of Burton's journey (disguised as a Muslim) to the forbidden holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the book contains a personal inscription to a friend, Charles Warren.
After an on-air interview with NPR where the personalized inscription is read aloud, Janeway and his bookstore receive some notoriety. The elderly Josephine Gallant, Jo to her friends, traveled from her retirement home in Baltimore to Janeway's store in Denver and claims the Burton book once belonged to her family. She explains that her grandfather was Charlie Warren, the man mentioned in the inscription, who was living in Baltimore more than eighty years ago and had a fabulous collection of Burton books, letters and notes, including Richard Burton's handwritten journal detailing his travels with Charlie through the American South in May of 1860, a year before the Civil War (1861 thru 1865).
Cliff Janeway is of course the Bookman who makes the promise to Josephine while she's on her death bed. Her grandfather's collection of Burton books were unscrupulously purchased some 80 years ago by the Treadwell bookstore in Baltimore and Jo wants Janeway to recover them, if possible and donate the collection to a library in her grandfather's name. Josephine remembers the books fondly from her childhood, but after her grandfather's death in 1906, her boozy dad sold the collection to the Treadwells for $30, which he promptly spent on booze.
Jo brought with her the only book from that collection that wasn't sold because it hadn't been on the bookshelves at the time and she's kept it safe and in pristine condition all these years. She offers it to Cliff if he'll try to locate the rest of her grandfather's collection. Denise and Mike Ralston have been helping Jo since she arrived in Denver and because of their kindness she wants Denise to receive some of the profits when her book is sold.
Janeway knows this will be a monumental task, locating a book collection that was sold decades ago, but he plans to give it his best effort. - edited & expanded
.
The story's conclusion isn't particularly believable and the author actually wrote this tale as historical fiction concerning the very real person Sir Richard Burton, giving the details of his genius and exploits. There's some hypocritical comments with Janeway stating that $30 was a steal for the Burton books even in 1906, but later he brags about getting a $300 book cheap at $6 cuz the seller didn't know what it was really worth. So, Josephine's dad sold the books cheap, boohoo get over it.
The book begins with Janeway telling the story from sometime in the future, thinking back to the year 1987 when he was 37 years old and the internet was not yet widely available for book searches and determining the price of a collectible book could be an arduous task.
Janeway is back from his Seattle adventure which took place in book 2 The Bookman's Wake, where he received a 50 grand finders fee from the Grayson affair which concerned an edition of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. The money is burning a hole in his pocket and he decides to spend it on one great book, the Burton three volume set.
At a dinner party held by Janeway's friend Judge Lee Huxley, he gets a look at the judge's impressive book collection. Lee inherited much of it from his grandma Betts, including many penned by the British explorer Richard Burton. The Pulitzer Prize winning historian Hal Archer is also there and Janeway has admired his historical fiction for years, but the author turns out to be a stuffed shirt. Being a visting author from Charleston, Archer-the-jerk has been provided with a car and driver and the driver is the lovely Erin d'Angelo, an attorney who moonlights for a company that schleps around visiting writers. Erin is also Janeway's future girlfriend.
For their first date Erin was a no-show, so Janeway closed his bookstore for the night and ordered himself a pizza and that's when she finally showed up. The Ralstons call, urging Janeway to quickly come to their house where Josephine seems to be dieing. On her deathbed Jo offers Janeway that one book she has from her grandpa, now worth $25,000, if he'll try to find the missing collection. After she's dead and gone, Janeway offers to give Denise and Mike half the value of the book while he keeps it safe in his store and starts his investigation into grandpa Charlie's Burton books. Denise wants to hold on to the book for a day or two and Janeway warns her that even a spot on the cover could mean five grand off the book's value. Mike is a nervous wreck, wants the money and for Janeway to take charge of the book.
Sometime after Denise turned the book over to Janeway, someone snuck into their house and smothered her with a pillow, left eleven hundred dollars on the bed and a white guy was seen rushing from the house. Cliff suspects the murder had something to do with the book and the killer didn't know she'd already given it back. Mike the husband and Erin claim they hadn't mentioned the book to anyone.
Now Janeway goes into his homicide detective mode, something he misses more than he realizes. He flies to Baltimore and visits the Treadwell bookstore which is now run by the 4th generation of Treadwells, the brothers Dean and Carl. He also has a run in with Dante a local gangster and associate of Carl Treadwell. Archer-the-jerk who lives in Charleston, South Carolina is also here in Baltimore palling around with Dean Treadwell.
In the Baltimore suburbs Janeway goes to see Koko Bujak who lives in Ellicott City. She's a retired librarian who volunteers at Josephine's retirement home. Koko is doing life histories of the old folks and has recorded on cassette hours of Jo telling all about her life and times with her grandfather including his travels with Sir Robert Burton. And it seems all these people are interested in Burton books including that one remaining book belonging to Jo. A while ago she brought it into the Treadwell store and asked them to make an offer. Their obvious low price was proof to Josephine that they're still a bunch of crooks.
•
What's really going on?
Here are the revealing story details and exactly how it all ends - only if you're interested.
Some guys attack Janeway and Koko at her house, stealing all her notes and cassettes about Jo and Grandpa Charlie. He knows who did it, so Cliff heads over to Treadwell books where Carl, Dante and a third thug are trying to figure out what's valuable on the tapes. Janeway gets the jump on them, dishing out the same first class beating he had received, plus a little extra for Dante the gangster. Dante doesn't heed the warning and gets revenge by burning down Koko's house, destroying all of her possessions and research except for the tapes and notes on Jo and Charlie that they have with them.
They fly to Charleston where Koko plans to do research to verify Grandpa Charlie's time he spent there with Burton. On the plane Janeway listens to one of the tapes of Koko interviewing Josephine under hypnosis. Yup, hypnotic trance. That's how Koko learned all this detailed information of exactly what Grandpa Charlie had said to Jo when she was just a child and all the details she'd read in his journal about the 1860 adventure with Burton. Supposedly conversations and the written information you've read are all locked away in the human mind and can be revealed in exact detail through hypnosis.
As Janeway listens to Jo on the tape, we get a very long detailed story of her Grandpa Charlie traveling with Burton the British explorer. They travel by riverboat and stop in various places from Charleston to New Orleans, encounter fair maidens and rogues intent on doing them harm, consult with military officials about the impending Civil War and much more - a section that's far more dull than interesting. Charlie wonders at times if his new friend was actually spying on America for his home country of England. Burton promised to send Charlie copies of all his various books as he wrote them. When Burton departed he forgot the journal he'd been writing and drawing in during this adventure in the American South. Grandpa Charlie kept the journal with the books and that journal turned out to be the most valuable part of the collection.
Who has the collection? Judge Lee Huxley has them. These are the books he inherited from his grandma Betts. Archer-the-jerk is Huxley's cousin, they grew up together and some years ago the Judge shared a couple of the books with his black sheep relative: that very valuable Burton journal and the Burton book set Janeway bought at auction. The plan was not to sell any of them until after the last Charles Warren relative was dead, specifically Josephine. Archer has writer's block and a lot of debt and so he put up that book for auction and agreed to let the judge buy-back the journal.
After Grandpa Charlie's death in 1906, Archer the first, that's grandfather Archer, had hired the Treadwells to purchase the Burton book collection cheap. Grandmother Betts outlived them all and inherited the books which she eventually left to her grandson, Judge Lee.
Dante the gangster just won't learn his lesson. Erin, Janeway and Koko are visiting the historic Fort Sumter and spend the night there, camped out on the island in sleeping bags. Dante and his thugs show up to do them in and they brought along a ladder in their boat to sneak over the fort's wall. Cliff is expecting this and surprises them as they reach the top of the wall. This time he warns Dante to expect a visit from a guy and pushes them off the top of the wall and Dante lands painfully on the shore below. The four thugs get back in their boat and retreat.
Dante the gangster is a killer and the easiest way for Janeway to end this ongoing threat is to just shoot the thug while he's right there atop the wall, but Cliff just can't bring himself to murder a killer unless they were involved in an actual self-defense gunfight. The "I know a guy" promise is not an idle threat. Janeway does know a guy. His name is Vinnie Marranzino, a notorious Denver mobster and Vince wants more than anything to do a favor for his long ago pal Cliff. Many years ago in their rough and tumble youth, Janeway saved Vince's life and even though they went into different professions, cop and the mob, Vinnie has always wanted to repay the debt.
Erin had also been in Charleston negotiating with Archer-the-jerk who had suddenly changed the price he wanted the Judge (his cousin) to pay for the Burton Journal. Erin, a friend of the Judge and his wife and an attorney is acting as go between as they negotiate the price for the journal. Janeway saw her leave Archer's house and she soon joined him and Koko. To write the Jo, Grandpa and Burton story, Koko needs to verify all the details, which is why she came to Charleston, to check the local library, interview the director at the Fort Sumter National Historical Park and others.
They hear that Archer has been severely beaten and hospitalized, obviously Dante and company wanting to know how to find Janeway. Archer is now despondent and agrees to give his cousin the Judge the journal at the original price. Dean Treadwell, Archer's lifelong pal, retrieves the journal from the house where Dante had thoroughly hidden it, actually buried it and turns it over to Janeway and Erin.
Their tasks mostly complete and Koko without a place to live, the three (Janeway, Koko & Erin) fly to Denver and turn over the journal to Lee Huxley the Judge. In the meantime Janeway has figured out the mystery of who killed poor Denise. She and her hubby Mike had invited the frail Josephine to stay at their house. Janeway had made his bookman's promise at that house and Jo offered them her one and only prized book and it's where Jo passed. When Cliff accuses the Judge, Erin is livid at the suggestion. The Huxleys are family to her, they paid her way through law school and she lived with them for years, but when Judge Lee insists he didn't mean to kill her, it's a surprise.
Here it's not clear why Judge Lee was so determined to get a hold of that one last book. Erin had lied, she did tell someone about it, she told the Judge in confidence. He went over there and offered Denise a lot of money for the book, but she no longer had it. She of course got a little freaked out with the Judge and when she started screaming he was only using the pillow to quiet her down not kill her. To Cliff the Judge insists it was just an accident, he didn't go over there to kill anyone.
The Judge was worried about the Burton book collection because he's had a couple of interviews with US president Ronald Reagan and he's on the list as a possible candidate for the US Supreme Court. He legally owns the book collection, but was worried over even a minor scandal coming out about how his distant relatives obtained the books in the first place. With the pillow incident revealed, Judge Lee suicides in his car by leaving the engine running in the garage and Janeway so far has not alerted the authorities to Lee's involvement in Denise's death.
Vinnie gives Janeway a call about the problem he had in that "neck of the woods." Nothing is said about what was done, if anything, to Dante the gangster. Koko's house is being rebuilt and some unknown party is paying for it. Earlier in the story Janeway had mused about Dante making amends by giving Koko her house back. So, it's left up in the air whether Dante is alive or not or maybe someone compelled him to rebuild the house he burned down.
The bookman's promise is not kept. Janeway found the books, but since they belong to the Judge and now to his widow it's very unlikely they will ever be donated to a library in Grandpa Charlie's name. We don't know if Mrs Huxley knows her husband the Judge accidentally killed Denise, but she definitely blames Janeway for her husband's demise and even threatened to kill Cliff, if it were possible. She also claimed she burned the book. It doesn't say what book. We can assume it's the Burton Journal that they all brought over that night.
In the end Janeway gets a pleasant call from Erin, she's on her way over. It's been 40 days since their date and she seems determined to move on with Janeway in her life.
•
Mostly interesting, but the author has a habit of not always telling the details. Instead he leaves it to the reader to assume what happened. For instance Janeway had decided he would not be calling his mob pal Vinnie for help with Dante. Obviously at some point he did contact Vinnie, cuz the guy gives him a call, saying: "Hey Cliff everything's fine. Let me know if you have any more trouble in that neck of the woods."
..
.
THE BOOKMAN'S PROMISE
by John Dunning, pub. 2004.
Book 3 of the Cliff Janeway series, a former Denver homicide detective is now a book dealer in first editions and rare books.
.
THE STORY
At auction Janeway bought a signed three volume first edition by the legendary British author and explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821 to 1890). The book is a true classic, telling of Burton's journey (disguised as a Muslim) to the forbidden holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the book contains a personal inscription to a friend, Charles Warren.
After an on-air interview with NPR where the personalized inscription is read aloud, Janeway and his bookstore receive some notoriety. The elderly Josephine Gallant, Jo to her friends, traveled from her retirement home in Baltimore to Janeway's store in Denver and claims the Burton book once belonged to her family. She explains that her grandfather was Charlie Warren, the man mentioned in the inscription, who was living in Baltimore more than eighty years ago and had a fabulous collection of Burton books, letters and notes, including Richard Burton's handwritten journal detailing his travels with Charlie through the American South in May of 1860, a year before the Civil War (1861 thru 1865).
Cliff Janeway is of course the Bookman who makes the promise to Josephine while she's on her death bed. Her grandfather's collection of Burton books were unscrupulously purchased some 80 years ago by the Treadwell bookstore in Baltimore and Jo wants Janeway to recover them, if possible and donate the collection to a library in her grandfather's name. Josephine remembers the books fondly from her childhood, but after her grandfather's death in 1906, her boozy dad sold the collection to the Treadwells for $30, which he promptly spent on booze.
Jo brought with her the only book from that collection that wasn't sold because it hadn't been on the bookshelves at the time and she's kept it safe and in pristine condition all these years. She offers it to Cliff if he'll try to locate the rest of her grandfather's collection. Denise and Mike Ralston have been helping Jo since she arrived in Denver and because of their kindness she wants Denise to receive some of the profits when her book is sold.
Janeway knows this will be a monumental task, locating a book collection that was sold decades ago, but he plans to give it his best effort. - edited & expanded
.
The story's conclusion isn't particularly believable and the author actually wrote this tale as historical fiction concerning the very real person Sir Richard Burton, giving the details of his genius and exploits. There's some hypocritical comments with Janeway stating that $30 was a steal for the Burton books even in 1906, but later he brags about getting a $300 book cheap at $6 cuz the seller didn't know what it was really worth. So, Josephine's dad sold the books cheap, boohoo get over it.
The book begins with Janeway telling the story from sometime in the future, thinking back to the year 1987 when he was 37 years old and the internet was not yet widely available for book searches and determining the price of a collectible book could be an arduous task.
Janeway is back from his Seattle adventure which took place in book 2 The Bookman's Wake, where he received a 50 grand finders fee from the Grayson affair which concerned an edition of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. The money is burning a hole in his pocket and he decides to spend it on one great book, the Burton three volume set.
At a dinner party held by Janeway's friend Judge Lee Huxley, he gets a look at the judge's impressive book collection. Lee inherited much of it from his grandma Betts, including many penned by the British explorer Richard Burton. The Pulitzer Prize winning historian Hal Archer is also there and Janeway has admired his historical fiction for years, but the author turns out to be a stuffed shirt. Being a visting author from Charleston, Archer-the-jerk has been provided with a car and driver and the driver is the lovely Erin d'Angelo, an attorney who moonlights for a company that schleps around visiting writers. Erin is also Janeway's future girlfriend.
For their first date Erin was a no-show, so Janeway closed his bookstore for the night and ordered himself a pizza and that's when she finally showed up. The Ralstons call, urging Janeway to quickly come to their house where Josephine seems to be dieing. On her deathbed Jo offers Janeway that one book she has from her grandpa, now worth $25,000, if he'll try to find the missing collection. After she's dead and gone, Janeway offers to give Denise and Mike half the value of the book while he keeps it safe in his store and starts his investigation into grandpa Charlie's Burton books. Denise wants to hold on to the book for a day or two and Janeway warns her that even a spot on the cover could mean five grand off the book's value. Mike is a nervous wreck, wants the money and for Janeway to take charge of the book.
Sometime after Denise turned the book over to Janeway, someone snuck into their house and smothered her with a pillow, left eleven hundred dollars on the bed and a white guy was seen rushing from the house. Cliff suspects the murder had something to do with the book and the killer didn't know she'd already given it back. Mike the husband and Erin claim they hadn't mentioned the book to anyone.
Now Janeway goes into his homicide detective mode, something he misses more than he realizes. He flies to Baltimore and visits the Treadwell bookstore which is now run by the 4th generation of Treadwells, the brothers Dean and Carl. He also has a run in with Dante a local gangster and associate of Carl Treadwell. Archer-the-jerk who lives in Charleston, South Carolina is also here in Baltimore palling around with Dean Treadwell.
In the Baltimore suburbs Janeway goes to see Koko Bujak who lives in Ellicott City. She's a retired librarian who volunteers at Josephine's retirement home. Koko is doing life histories of the old folks and has recorded on cassette hours of Jo telling all about her life and times with her grandfather including his travels with Sir Robert Burton. And it seems all these people are interested in Burton books including that one remaining book belonging to Jo. A while ago she brought it into the Treadwell store and asked them to make an offer. Their obvious low price was proof to Josephine that they're still a bunch of crooks.
•
What's really going on?
Here are the revealing story details and exactly how it all ends - only if you're interested.
Some guys attack Janeway and Koko at her house, stealing all her notes and cassettes about Jo and Grandpa Charlie. He knows who did it, so Cliff heads over to Treadwell books where Carl, Dante and a third thug are trying to figure out what's valuable on the tapes. Janeway gets the jump on them, dishing out the same first class beating he had received, plus a little extra for Dante the gangster. Dante doesn't heed the warning and gets revenge by burning down Koko's house, destroying all of her possessions and research except for the tapes and notes on Jo and Charlie that they have with them.
They fly to Charleston where Koko plans to do research to verify Grandpa Charlie's time he spent there with Burton. On the plane Janeway listens to one of the tapes of Koko interviewing Josephine under hypnosis. Yup, hypnotic trance. That's how Koko learned all this detailed information of exactly what Grandpa Charlie had said to Jo when she was just a child and all the details she'd read in his journal about the 1860 adventure with Burton. Supposedly conversations and the written information you've read are all locked away in the human mind and can be revealed in exact detail through hypnosis.
As Janeway listens to Jo on the tape, we get a very long detailed story of her Grandpa Charlie traveling with Burton the British explorer. They travel by riverboat and stop in various places from Charleston to New Orleans, encounter fair maidens and rogues intent on doing them harm, consult with military officials about the impending Civil War and much more - a section that's far more dull than interesting. Charlie wonders at times if his new friend was actually spying on America for his home country of England. Burton promised to send Charlie copies of all his various books as he wrote them. When Burton departed he forgot the journal he'd been writing and drawing in during this adventure in the American South. Grandpa Charlie kept the journal with the books and that journal turned out to be the most valuable part of the collection.
Who has the collection? Judge Lee Huxley has them. These are the books he inherited from his grandma Betts. Archer-the-jerk is Huxley's cousin, they grew up together and some years ago the Judge shared a couple of the books with his black sheep relative: that very valuable Burton journal and the Burton book set Janeway bought at auction. The plan was not to sell any of them until after the last Charles Warren relative was dead, specifically Josephine. Archer has writer's block and a lot of debt and so he put up that book for auction and agreed to let the judge buy-back the journal.
After Grandpa Charlie's death in 1906, Archer the first, that's grandfather Archer, had hired the Treadwells to purchase the Burton book collection cheap. Grandmother Betts outlived them all and inherited the books which she eventually left to her grandson, Judge Lee.
Dante the gangster just won't learn his lesson. Erin, Janeway and Koko are visiting the historic Fort Sumter and spend the night there, camped out on the island in sleeping bags. Dante and his thugs show up to do them in and they brought along a ladder in their boat to sneak over the fort's wall. Cliff is expecting this and surprises them as they reach the top of the wall. This time he warns Dante to expect a visit from a guy and pushes them off the top of the wall and Dante lands painfully on the shore below. The four thugs get back in their boat and retreat.
Dante the gangster is a killer and the easiest way for Janeway to end this ongoing threat is to just shoot the thug while he's right there atop the wall, but Cliff just can't bring himself to murder a killer unless they were involved in an actual self-defense gunfight. The "I know a guy" promise is not an idle threat. Janeway does know a guy. His name is Vinnie Marranzino, a notorious Denver mobster and Vince wants more than anything to do a favor for his long ago pal Cliff. Many years ago in their rough and tumble youth, Janeway saved Vince's life and even though they went into different professions, cop and the mob, Vinnie has always wanted to repay the debt.
Erin had also been in Charleston negotiating with Archer-the-jerk who had suddenly changed the price he wanted the Judge (his cousin) to pay for the Burton Journal. Erin, a friend of the Judge and his wife and an attorney is acting as go between as they negotiate the price for the journal. Janeway saw her leave Archer's house and she soon joined him and Koko. To write the Jo, Grandpa and Burton story, Koko needs to verify all the details, which is why she came to Charleston, to check the local library, interview the director at the Fort Sumter National Historical Park and others.
They hear that Archer has been severely beaten and hospitalized, obviously Dante and company wanting to know how to find Janeway. Archer is now despondent and agrees to give his cousin the Judge the journal at the original price. Dean Treadwell, Archer's lifelong pal, retrieves the journal from the house where Dante had thoroughly hidden it, actually buried it and turns it over to Janeway and Erin.
Their tasks mostly complete and Koko without a place to live, the three (Janeway, Koko & Erin) fly to Denver and turn over the journal to Lee Huxley the Judge. In the meantime Janeway has figured out the mystery of who killed poor Denise. She and her hubby Mike had invited the frail Josephine to stay at their house. Janeway had made his bookman's promise at that house and Jo offered them her one and only prized book and it's where Jo passed. When Cliff accuses the Judge, Erin is livid at the suggestion. The Huxleys are family to her, they paid her way through law school and she lived with them for years, but when Judge Lee insists he didn't mean to kill her, it's a surprise.
Here it's not clear why Judge Lee was so determined to get a hold of that one last book. Erin had lied, she did tell someone about it, she told the Judge in confidence. He went over there and offered Denise a lot of money for the book, but she no longer had it. She of course got a little freaked out with the Judge and when she started screaming he was only using the pillow to quiet her down not kill her. To Cliff the Judge insists it was just an accident, he didn't go over there to kill anyone.
The Judge was worried about the Burton book collection because he's had a couple of interviews with US president Ronald Reagan and he's on the list as a possible candidate for the US Supreme Court. He legally owns the book collection, but was worried over even a minor scandal coming out about how his distant relatives obtained the books in the first place. With the pillow incident revealed, Judge Lee suicides in his car by leaving the engine running in the garage and Janeway so far has not alerted the authorities to Lee's involvement in Denise's death.
Vinnie gives Janeway a call about the problem he had in that "neck of the woods." Nothing is said about what was done, if anything, to Dante the gangster. Koko's house is being rebuilt and some unknown party is paying for it. Earlier in the story Janeway had mused about Dante making amends by giving Koko her house back. So, it's left up in the air whether Dante is alive or not or maybe someone compelled him to rebuild the house he burned down.
The bookman's promise is not kept. Janeway found the books, but since they belong to the Judge and now to his widow it's very unlikely they will ever be donated to a library in Grandpa Charlie's name. We don't know if Mrs Huxley knows her husband the Judge accidentally killed Denise, but she definitely blames Janeway for her husband's demise and even threatened to kill Cliff, if it were possible. She also claimed she burned the book. It doesn't say what book. We can assume it's the Burton Journal that they all brought over that night.
In the end Janeway gets a pleasant call from Erin, she's on her way over. It's been 40 days since their date and she seems determined to move on with Janeway in her life.
•
Mostly interesting, but the author has a habit of not always telling the details. Instead he leaves it to the reader to assume what happened. For instance Janeway had decided he would not be calling his mob pal Vinnie for help with Dante. Obviously at some point he did contact Vinnie, cuz the guy gives him a call, saying: "Hey Cliff everything's fine. Let me know if you have any more trouble in that neck of the woods."
..
.
December 8, 2010
This is the third book in the Cliff Janeway series; but the book stand s alone and the series may be read in any order. Cliff is an ex-cop, who used to collect books, now's he's a rare books dealer.
You do not usually associate books with crime. But rare books cost serious money. At stake in this mystery is an 1860's book, signed the the author, famous explorer Richard Burton. Cliff estimates the value of this book at twenty to twenty-five thousands dollars. That kind of money does attract criminals.
Cliff and his two allies--Koko and Erin--travel to Baltimore' then Charleston and Fort Sumter. They are seeking a possible handwritten journal written by Sir Francis Burton. If it exists, it would be almost priceless due to it's historical importance.
The story within a story--Charlie Warren's journal from 1860 I liked very much, and thought it raised this mystery a little out of the ordinary.
There is plenty of suspense, some violence--but not too graphic, and loads of tidbits about bookselling all wrapped together in an entertaining story.
Recommend of course for mystery fans. Because of the story within a story, the civil war journal might also interest fans of historical fiction; especially if you are interested in the Civil War era.
You do not usually associate books with crime. But rare books cost serious money. At stake in this mystery is an 1860's book, signed the the author, famous explorer Richard Burton. Cliff estimates the value of this book at twenty to twenty-five thousands dollars. That kind of money does attract criminals.
Cliff and his two allies--Koko and Erin--travel to Baltimore' then Charleston and Fort Sumter. They are seeking a possible handwritten journal written by Sir Francis Burton. If it exists, it would be almost priceless due to it's historical importance.
The story within a story--Charlie Warren's journal from 1860 I liked very much, and thought it raised this mystery a little out of the ordinary.
There is plenty of suspense, some violence--but not too graphic, and loads of tidbits about bookselling all wrapped together in an entertaining story.
Recommend of course for mystery fans. Because of the story within a story, the civil war journal might also interest fans of historical fiction; especially if you are interested in the Civil War era.
July 17, 2014
A great Janeway Adventure!, July 27, 2012
By Ellen Rappaport (Florida)
This review is from: Bookmans Promise (Paperback)
This adventure takes Cliff Janeway on a search for the famous explorer's(Richard Burton) collection of his journeys. This search actually begins after Janeway has purchased a first edition signed by Richard Burton's at an auction. When Josephine Gallant learns of this purchase she believes it to be part of her grandfather's collection of Richard Burton's writings which has mysteriously disappeared after his death. Josephine implores Janeway to find this collection.
And then the adventure begins. This is the 2nd Cliff Janeway adventure I've listened to on CD and loved every minute of it. The story telling by the author is smooth and kept me interested and on the edge of my seat throughout. George Guidall, narrator/performer, once again does a magnificent job of bringing me/the reader into the search along with Janeway.
I most certainly recommend this adventure/mystery to all lovers of mystery.
Ellen
By Ellen Rappaport (Florida)
This review is from: Bookmans Promise (Paperback)
This adventure takes Cliff Janeway on a search for the famous explorer's(Richard Burton) collection of his journeys. This search actually begins after Janeway has purchased a first edition signed by Richard Burton's at an auction. When Josephine Gallant learns of this purchase she believes it to be part of her grandfather's collection of Richard Burton's writings which has mysteriously disappeared after his death. Josephine implores Janeway to find this collection.
And then the adventure begins. This is the 2nd Cliff Janeway adventure I've listened to on CD and loved every minute of it. The story telling by the author is smooth and kept me interested and on the edge of my seat throughout. George Guidall, narrator/performer, once again does a magnificent job of bringing me/the reader into the search along with Janeway.
I most certainly recommend this adventure/mystery to all lovers of mystery.
Ellen
December 13, 2023
Great fun, filled with interesting (and confirmable) details linking this fictional tail to the exciting real life of the 19th century explorer, Sir Richard Francis Burton - whose books and journal are the foundation of the third Bookman Series tale. Our bookseller/former cop hero, Cliff Janeway, meets a new love, an old woman with an anguished tale of a lost Burton collection, and sets off on a cross-country adventure. As I’m sure is true for most rare book sellers (he said, rolling his eyes in mock sarcasm), Janeway’s story includes his being beaten by a hood in gritty Baltimore, camping out in Fort Sumter where he pushes people off the wall in the dark, and wrapping up the last details of the mystery back home in Denver. There is dark suspense, super-cop re-emergence, wise-guy sarcasm, an odd bit of romance - all bundled into a context in which a famous, world-traveling explorer (Burton) may have played a role in shaping the initial moments of the American Civil War. The series continues to entertain. I look forward to Book Four.
August 19, 2018
Love this series!
Cliff Janeway is quite the protagonist! Who would think to create a cop/book dealer?? Terrific research gives such detail to the plot and the storylines that will not let you go. Three down and I am not tired of the characters!
Cliff Janeway is quite the protagonist! Who would think to create a cop/book dealer?? Terrific research gives such detail to the plot and the storylines that will not let you go. Three down and I am not tired of the characters!
January 1, 2018
Sir Richard Burton was a real person ... is his memoir also based on fact?
September 8, 2025
What a strange thing life is sometimes. I've been enjoying this series so I started the third book just after I'd finished the second one and it was such a crazy coincidence that I had just finished listening to a podcast about Sir Richard Francis Burton's exploration to find the source of the Nile River and now I'm reading a novel about a collection of rare Burton books. So odd! Anyway, Janeway is using the spoils from the last book where he received a cut from Amy when she sold the Greyson memorabilia to buy a rare set of Burton novels at auction for $29,000. They are inscribed to a man named Charlie Warren, a man he's never heard of. He got the idea to find and buy Burton's books from his friend Lee, a judge that he knows from his cop days, when he hosted a dinner party and invited his childhood friend and recent Pulitzer prize winner, Hal Archer. Janeway had always admired Archer's writing until he met the man in person and found him to be standoffish and surly. Archer brought up Burton's books and made it sound like he might be writing his next book about Burton. Now that Janeway has the Burton books from auction, Lee asked to see them and one thing led to another and a radio interview and a newspaper article later and Janeway is getting crank calls from people who want to sell him more Burton books. And then an old woman shows up at his bookshop with a fantastic story. It is well known that Burton travelled to America in 1860 after the controversy of his trip to Africia and his public fight with his partner on the exploration, John Hanning Speke. This woman claimed that her grandfather, Charlie Warren, became friends with Burton on that American trip and that the two travelled to Charlotte together just before the Civil War. While there, they had their picture taken and became lifelong friends, although they never saw one another again. Burton sent a signed copy of each of his books to Charlie and he kept the collection and intended it give it to his granddaughter when he died but she was so young that her father sold them to a bookstore in Baltimore for pennies, not knowing what they were worth. She only managed to save one book and she gave that to Janeway with her dying breath with the promise that he'd try to find the rest of her collection. Janeway tracks down the Baltimore bookstore and finds that it is still in business and then he tracks down Coco, the old woman's friend who was interviewing her about her grandfather in hopes of writing a book. Dean, the current owner of the Baltimore bookstore, just happens to be childhood friends with Archer and it is clear to Janeway that they are up to something. When he learns that Archer has an old Burton journal that he is trying to sell, he knows that it was from the old lady's collection. Then strange things start happening. Someone beats up Archer, tries to steal Coco's interview tapes and burns down her house. When Janeway and Coco head to Charlotte to try to track down the old picture of Charlie and Burton, the thugs follow them there. It turns out that they are working with Dean's brother who is trying to steal the remaining Burton material, to presumably sell themselves. It sounded farfetched that Dean didn't know what his brother was up to and that he had nothing to do with it. After Archer is beaten, Dean negotiates a deal so that Janeway will take the journal in order to protect Archer from further harm. He does and when he returns to Denver he finally puts the pieces together. Lee and Archer were actually cousins, not just childhood friends, and they both had the same grandmother Betsy. She somehow had the Burton collection that really belonged to Charlie Warren's granddaughter (I'm still unclear how she got ahold of it) and she left it all to Lee because he was her favorite. Lee, feeling bad that Archer got cut out, gave him the journal and the two books that turned up at auction with the agreement that they'd both keep the collection a secret until anyone that had a claim from Charlie Warren's family had died. But Archer, hard up for money, put the two books that Janeway bought up for auction, thinking that he could remain anonymous but Lee knew that they were part of the collection as soon as Janeway showed them to him. Lee, angry that Archer broke their agreement, was trying to get the journal back because he was under consideration by Reagan to become a Supreme Court justice and he couldn't have any scandal. The Burton saga ended Janeway's friendship with Lee and he killed himself rather than let the scandal ruin him. And, as always, there was the obligatory romance, this time between Janeway and Lee's lawyer friend, Erin. We'll see if she is still around in the next book or not.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 31, 2022
Review: The Bookman's Promise (Cliff Janeway #3) by John Dunning. This was a great holiday gift from a dear friend, and I was much in need of a good mystery. Although this is the third in the series of five, I didn't need to have read the previous ones first (I do want to read them now, though!). As you might surmise, Cliff Janeway is a collector of rare books, and this mystery introduces the reader to a lot of that specialized world and so is interesting to book lovers. Janeway owns a bookstore in Denver and was once a cop. He has become interested in the books of real-life explorer Richard Burton (not the actor!) who was quite a character (there are references by the author at the end of the book should you like to read more about this intriguing man). Having come into a chunk of easy money, he spends a lot of it at auction on a book by Burton, signed to an unknown friend addressed as "Charlie". An NPR interview spreads the information about this acquisition widely, and Janeway receives a phone call from a very old woman who claims to be the granddaughter of said Charlie, and claims the book is rightfully hers. When she arrives at his bookstore after having escaped her assisted living facility in the East, everything takes off. She dies (naturally) at the home of new friends who helped her in Denver, but extracts a promise from Janeway before she expires that he will try to find the rest of her grandfather's collection of Burton books, "stolen" from her by shady characters when Charlie died. The book definitely has a noir feel to it and reads very fast. Our old lady Josephine had allowed herself to be hypnotized multiple times by another older woman named Koko, during which sessions she tells the life of her grandfather who supposedly accompanied Burton during a trip to the American South in 1860 just before the outbreak of the Civil War. It is a bit of a stretch to accept the long chapter of details of this trip which Josephine had "memorized" from interactions with Charlie, but the subplot is quite exciting, too; did Burton in fact influence the start of the war, was he a spy, or what? Plenty of thugs to go around, a love interest which is complicated, and a murder early on which is not solved until the very end... all in all a great read!
April 7, 2019
BOTTOM-LINE:
Good mystery, but a lot of exposition and slow ending
.
PLOT OR PREMISE:
Janeway decides to use his finder's fee from the Grayson affair (book #2) to buy one amazing book, paying almost $30K for it at auction. The mystery is about the origins of the book itself, but more about the author himself, an explorer named Richard Burton (not the actor).
.
WHAT I LIKED:
After buying the book, Janeway is contacted by an old woman who claims the book was hers once upon a time and subsequently stolen. Janeway believes her, and involves some other people in the story, one of whom ends up dead. There's a killer chasing the book and it leads all the way to the same places the explorer visited in the American South before the US Civil War. Seedy bookdealers, a biographer with a familiar monkey on his back, a family friend with a similar but slightly different monkey. Everyone wants the book, the history, the story, and to own a piece of history.
.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
There is a lot of exposition in the story. Some of it comes from a woman who did research using hypnosis and tape recordings to recover lost memories, and while it works as a plot device, it could have just as easily been done earlier in the woman's life and without as much page time. In addition, there is a flashback to the people in the Burton story (just before the US Civil War), which happens about the 40% mark and runs about 10-15% of the novel. It's engaging in the first person, but makes for another really long exposition. Finally, the action scene at the end seems more like out of a cheap action movie, and it takes a LONG time to get to the actual action.
.
DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I am not personal friends with the author, nor do I follow him on social media.
Good mystery, but a lot of exposition and slow ending
.
PLOT OR PREMISE:
Janeway decides to use his finder's fee from the Grayson affair (book #2) to buy one amazing book, paying almost $30K for it at auction. The mystery is about the origins of the book itself, but more about the author himself, an explorer named Richard Burton (not the actor).
.
WHAT I LIKED:
After buying the book, Janeway is contacted by an old woman who claims the book was hers once upon a time and subsequently stolen. Janeway believes her, and involves some other people in the story, one of whom ends up dead. There's a killer chasing the book and it leads all the way to the same places the explorer visited in the American South before the US Civil War. Seedy bookdealers, a biographer with a familiar monkey on his back, a family friend with a similar but slightly different monkey. Everyone wants the book, the history, the story, and to own a piece of history.
.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
There is a lot of exposition in the story. Some of it comes from a woman who did research using hypnosis and tape recordings to recover lost memories, and while it works as a plot device, it could have just as easily been done earlier in the woman's life and without as much page time. In addition, there is a flashback to the people in the Burton story (just before the US Civil War), which happens about the 40% mark and runs about 10-15% of the novel. It's engaging in the first person, but makes for another really long exposition. Finally, the action scene at the end seems more like out of a cheap action movie, and it takes a LONG time to get to the actual action.
.
DISCLOSURE:
I received no compensation, not even a free copy, in exchange for this review. I am not personal friends with the author, nor do I follow him on social media.
July 7, 2022
The discovery and purchase of an old Richard F Burton book triggers a series of stories that become nested mysteries. The first mystery is who was Charles Warren. Burton inscribed the book he gifted to Warren. That happened in 1860 pre US Civil war. The book is purchased by Cliff Janeway a former homicide cop who has become a book dealer and collector of rare books. He is contacted by an elderly woman who turns out to be the grand daughter of Charles Warren. We learn that Warren had a nearly complete collection of Burton’s books. They were swindled away from his daughter’s husband by a pair of shady book dealers from Baltimore.
The elderly woman dies before Janeway can learn a lot more. Then he discovers she had been befriended by a younger woman when she was living in an elder care home. That woman had a series of tapes she had made of the elderly woman speaking under anesthesia. She reveals her grandfather’s story of traveling to Charleston and Fort Sumter before the war and suggests that advice given by Burton may have lead to the opening act of the Civil war. It turns out Burton kept a notebook and diary and Janeway goes first to Baltimore and then Charleston in search of that volume. The story of that search is one of the nested mysteries. Another mystery was triggered by the smothering of a woman who had befriended the elderly woman when she came to Denver to speak with Janeway. And their is the Pulitzer Prize winning friend of a Judge friend of Janeway who is somehow mixed up with Burton’s story and his books. In the end the mysteries are unraveled thanks to a few unexpected coincidences. There is a night spent camping at Fort Sumter that involves a confrontation with a thug from Baltimore and a romance between Janeway and a young woman protégée of the Judge’s.
The elderly woman dies before Janeway can learn a lot more. Then he discovers she had been befriended by a younger woman when she was living in an elder care home. That woman had a series of tapes she had made of the elderly woman speaking under anesthesia. She reveals her grandfather’s story of traveling to Charleston and Fort Sumter before the war and suggests that advice given by Burton may have lead to the opening act of the Civil war. It turns out Burton kept a notebook and diary and Janeway goes first to Baltimore and then Charleston in search of that volume. The story of that search is one of the nested mysteries. Another mystery was triggered by the smothering of a woman who had befriended the elderly woman when she came to Denver to speak with Janeway. And their is the Pulitzer Prize winning friend of a Judge friend of Janeway who is somehow mixed up with Burton’s story and his books. In the end the mysteries are unraveled thanks to a few unexpected coincidences. There is a night spent camping at Fort Sumter that involves a confrontation with a thug from Baltimore and a romance between Janeway and a young woman protégée of the Judge’s.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 23, 2022
(3.75 rounded to 4.0).
This is the third book in the Cliff Janeway series. I enjoyed the first two and was ready for something different than I had even reading. This fit the bill.
Cliff Janeway is a former homicide detective turned rare book seller. When his latest acquisition of two rare copies of Sir Richard Burton’s work, British explorer and scholar, becomes front page news, it brings out a wide range of people trying to sell him questionable books or who claim a connection to Burton. Like
the 90 year old Josephine Gallant who clams the books were part of a collection she inherited from her grandfather that was swindled away from her father by disreputable book dealers. When Jo arrives at his bookstore he begins to wonder about her claims. Before he can investigate further, Jo dies of a heart attack leaving her last copy of a Burton notebook to him and a woman who has been kind to her in a deathbed plea to Janeway to find her other books. When the woman who wa co-owner of the book dies suspiciously, it sends Janeway on a quest to track down the unscrupulous book dealers who conned her father into selling Jo’s inheritance. What follows is an interesting detective tale along with an intriguing sub plot of a journey of Burton and Jo’s grandfather from Baltimore to New Orleans and a significant visit to Fort Sumpter.
This is a standard detective story with the twist of a book dealer. Well written, well plotted, well developed interesting characters and mystery. I enjoyed it. Recommend to readers of mysteries, books-about-books, crime, detective, historical fiction.
This is the third book in the Cliff Janeway series. I enjoyed the first two and was ready for something different than I had even reading. This fit the bill.
Cliff Janeway is a former homicide detective turned rare book seller. When his latest acquisition of two rare copies of Sir Richard Burton’s work, British explorer and scholar, becomes front page news, it brings out a wide range of people trying to sell him questionable books or who claim a connection to Burton. Like
the 90 year old Josephine Gallant who clams the books were part of a collection she inherited from her grandfather that was swindled away from her father by disreputable book dealers. When Jo arrives at his bookstore he begins to wonder about her claims. Before he can investigate further, Jo dies of a heart attack leaving her last copy of a Burton notebook to him and a woman who has been kind to her in a deathbed plea to Janeway to find her other books. When the woman who wa co-owner of the book dies suspiciously, it sends Janeway on a quest to track down the unscrupulous book dealers who conned her father into selling Jo’s inheritance. What follows is an interesting detective tale along with an intriguing sub plot of a journey of Burton and Jo’s grandfather from Baltimore to New Orleans and a significant visit to Fort Sumpter.
This is a standard detective story with the twist of a book dealer. Well written, well plotted, well developed interesting characters and mystery. I enjoyed it. Recommend to readers of mysteries, books-about-books, crime, detective, historical fiction.
March 22, 2025
A woman comes to visit Janeway in his store and tells her tale about how the magnificent books he has just purchased were from her grandfather’s collection. A local couple take her in and when she dies in their house, she extracts a promise from Janeway to find the collection she was swindled out of.
We get a side story of Janeway becoming friends with a famous judge who also collects books. Janeway also meets a lawyer, Erin, he is attracted to at the judge’s house.
After the woman of the house is murdered and the husband is suspected and he spirals back into drinking and gambling, Janeway heads east to trace the collection. He encounters crooked book dealers, gangsters, a helping hand who was helping the old lady get her memoirs of her grandfather down.
Turns out Charlie was traveling with this famous writer for a while when he was in the states. Burton never wrote about this journey so many of his travels were just conjectured. But Charlie’s journal plus a lost journal of Burton’s would prove.
Janeway gets it all. Finds the books, the murder (the famous judge), the girl (Erin), although that was touch and go.
Was fun and suspenseful.
We get a side story of Janeway becoming friends with a famous judge who also collects books. Janeway also meets a lawyer, Erin, he is attracted to at the judge’s house.
After the woman of the house is murdered and the husband is suspected and he spirals back into drinking and gambling, Janeway heads east to trace the collection. He encounters crooked book dealers, gangsters, a helping hand who was helping the old lady get her memoirs of her grandfather down.
Turns out Charlie was traveling with this famous writer for a while when he was in the states. Burton never wrote about this journey so many of his travels were just conjectured. But Charlie’s journal plus a lost journal of Burton’s would prove.
Janeway gets it all. Finds the books, the murder (the famous judge), the girl (Erin), although that was touch and go.
Was fun and suspenseful.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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