Booking In

Mystery-solving criminal lawyer Crang returns to investigate the disappearance of two rare books.

Fletcher Marshall is a Toronto antiquarian book dealer, internationally respected in the business. One night, someone blows the safe in his office and makes off with the contents, which include an infamous forged first edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese that is in itself a collector’s item. Fletcher, who was still in the process of verifying the book, doesn’t even know whether it was the real thing or a clever forgery (of a forgery). But rather than summon the cops to investigate the theft, he turns to his pal Crang, the nervy criminal lawyer, hoping he can retrieve the books before their owner gets wind of the crime. The owner happens to be the richest woman in Canada and a tough cookie who could ruin Fletcher’s career.

Crang gets on the hunt, learning much about the trade in musty books and the lucrative business it makes for forgers. Just as he seems to be getting close to answers, a shocking development makes things much more complicated — and much more dangerous.

Jack Batten, after a brief and unhappy career as a lawyer, has been a very happy writer for many years. The author of forty books, Batten has also reviewed jazz for the Globe and Mail, and, for twenty-five years, movies on CBC Radio. He currently writes the biweekly Whodunnit column in the Toronto Star. He lives in Toronto.