Biblio Mysteries

Mysteries about books are a mystery fan and book lover’s dream. In today’s episode, Brook and Sarah discuss examples of this popular sub-genre. Production note: We ran into technology issues and Brook’s sound isn’t as crisp as usual.

Discussed and mentioned

Magpie Murders (2016) Anthony Horowitz

The Plot (2021) Jean Hanff Korelitz

The Woman in the Library (2022) Sulari Gentill

The Body in the Library (1942) Agatha Christie

The Christie Curse (2013) Victoria Abbott

The Lost Library (2023) Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass

The Postscript Murders (2020) Elly Griffiths

You Are Fatally Invited (2025) Ande Pliego

Murder by the Book (2018) Lauren Elliott

Booked to Die (1992) John Dunning

Blue Ridge Library Mysteries (2017) Victoria Gilbert

Murder at the 42nd Street Library (2016) Con Lehane

https://mysteriouspress.com/blog/introducing-bibliomysteries-short-tales-about-deadly-books.asp

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Transcript

This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.

Sarah	Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah.
Brook	And I’m Brook and we both love mystery.
Sarah	Hi, Brook.
Brook	Hi Sarah, it’s so great to be talking to you again.
Sarah	Before we get into our episode, we have some exciting news to share.
Brook	That’s right. Later this fall, Sarah and I are going to be releasing our very first collaborative mystery that we wrote together.
Sarah	I’m super excited about this, Brook. ah And we will, I’m sure, talk more about it in future episodes. But we just wanted to put that on everybody’s radar that that’ll be coming soon.
Brook	That’s right. And you know, our newsletter subscribers to the Clued-In Chronicle will be getting the first peek at the cover and the title. So, you definitely want to subscribe over there to stay Clued In.
Sarah	So Brook, do you have a favorite setting for a mystery?
Brook	I really love anything like in a big old historic building or a historic town. Both of those really intrigue me.
Sarah	And those are excellent settings for bookshops or libraries. And for a mystery fan, a mystery set in one of those locations or a mystery about books can feel like the best possible combination.
Sarah	We have previously discussed authors as sleuths, but today we will focus more on mysteries set in libraries or bookshops or where books, not just the people who write them, play an important role.
Sarah	Like the entire mystery genre, biblio mysteries can encompass several subgenres. According to Otto Penzler of Mysterious Press and the Mysterious Bookshop, biblio mysteries are either set primarily in libraries or bookshops or the crime involves books.
Sarah	A mystery featuring an author isn’t necessarily a biblio mystery, but he does say that “if the nature of their work brings them into a mystery or the books or their books are a vital clue in the solution, they probably make the cut.”
Sarah	His bookshop commissions short stories from authors, and each story features books or those who write them, buy them, read them, collect them, sell them, or are in some way involved with them.
Sarah	And I’ve read one of his collections, and it was such a delight. But Mysterious Press is not the only publisher of mysteries set in the book world. So, Brook, let’s discuss some of our favorites.
Brook	Thanks, Sarah. Oh, I can’t wait. I love that he has these collections of biblio mysteries.
Brook	Otto Penzler is such a influential person in the mystery space. We’ve learned so much from him and here he here he is again.
Sarah	I was looking through my Goodreads and like just trying to get a handle on how many books I have read that have some connection to books.
Sarah	Or the book industry. And it’s a lot. Like there are a lot of books in this subgenre. And one that came to mind is um Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz. So, the sleuth is an editor.
Sarah	There’s a mysterious death of an author. There’s clues in the books that the author wrote. It is, I think, a great example of a biblio mystery.
Brook	First of all, I think that was a genius move to go to Goodreads because I was just kind of trying to think back to all the books. and And I did review, I keep a spreadsheet of books that I’ve read per year. And so I went back a couple of years, but Goodreads, that was a great idea.
Brook	And I agree, Magpie Murders is a fantastic example. Maybe one of the most creative ways, because you get this, you get the, maybe one of the most creative ways to tell one of these stories, because it is a story within a story, and those can be just so much fun.
Sarah	Well, and and that’s a great point, Brook, because I think a lot of examples of biblio mysteries, particularly if they ah center around a book, will end up being books within books because the there’s some clue or some insight that you the you as the reader and the sleuth in the story is meant to get from reading this other book.
Brook	Exactly. And for bookish people, it’s just like so satisfying to you know need to flip through the pages and find the clues. I think that this ah subgenre also lends itself really well to what we call the unusual format book. Because many times you get pieces and parts of that diary or old book within the text.
Sarah	Exactly. Yeah. Another book within a book story that, um, that I thought of was The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz, which is about an author becoming very, very successful, but after having stolen the work of another author.
Sarah	I really enjoyed it when I read it. So it came out in 2021 and I probably read it in either late that year in 2022.
Sarah	um But yeah, that that kind of book within a book trope, I think works super well. Another one that is a book within a book is The Woman in the Library from Sulari Gentill. It’s this author ah who’s writing a book, but there’s some clues in that book that that she’s writing.
Sarah	And she’s writing it in the library. And here’s this um really distressing sound. And and the the story kicks off from there. It’s, yeah, I highly recommend it.
Brook	I remember when that one was kind of hot off the press and how its title harkens back to a Golden Age biblio mystery, The Body in the Library, which of course is a Agatha Christie from 1942.
Brook	So I thought that was really great to be to be able to make that connection to the golden age, because really we’ve been enjoying biblio mysteries since the beginning of the mystery fiction. Because really we’ve been enjoying biblio mysteries since the very beginning.
Sarah	That’s right. And that reminds me of a book that I read relatively recently called The Christie Curse, which is the start of, I believe, of ah of a cozy series. And that book centers around a researcher who’s been tasked with finding what is meant to be a previously unknown Agatha Christie play.
Sarah	And so there’s a lot of, you know, um visiting old booksellers and and trying to track this down. And there’s, you know, a whole whole mystery around it. And it was it yeah it was it was quite a ah cozy read
Brook	Yeah, I’ve read that one too. And i that’s one of the things we find in biblio mysteries is a lot of times they’re searching for this object, this book.
Brook	So it makes it a little bit of a treasure hunt feel many times. And that just adds that layer of kind of adventure to the mystery. And you know that can be really satisfying as well.
Sarah	I just started listening to a middle grade novel called The Lost Library.
Sarah	So a little free library appears in this little boy’s town and he chooses two books and discovers that there’s some real mystery behind them and mystery behind this little free library. And I think it’s just such a fun premise.
Sarah	And so it’s written by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass. They’ve co-authored it.
Brook	Oh, that sounds fantastic. I happen to have my own little library in the town that I live in.
Brook	My writing partners and I put one up outside of the coffee shop that we often visit and ah registered it. And so little libraries are near and dear to my heart. So I wonder if ours is magical. That sounds really fun.
Sarah	Well, one just um over the summer came up in our neighborhood and I love walking by it. I go, I walk by it almost every day and it’s so fun to see the books entering and leaving. And sometimes there’s books in there that I think like “who on earth is going to want to read this?” And then when I come by, even if it’s 20 minutes later, the book is gone. So there is somebody on earth who wants to read that. And so there’s, they are such a wonderful idea.
Brook	They are so fun. And I would agree with that completely. I will think, oh my gosh, we’re going to have to change these books out. And no, they circulate, and people love them. And I think they’re a wonderful addition to a neighborhood.
Sarah	So again, when I was, you know, searching through my through my Goodreads, Brook, um I thought of the series by Elly Griffiths. One of the books is the Postscript Murders.
Sarah	But I think most of the books in that series that I’ve read have something to do with authors or writing or books. Does that. Am I am I making that up?
Brook	No, I think you’re right. To be honest, I’ve only read one in that series, but it’s definitely on my radar and I enjoyed it completely. In fact, I think you and I both said, “why haven’t we read more Elly Griffiths?”
Brook	But I love that she uses that series to maybe like really savor that love that we all have, the idea of the mystery based around the books and the people who write them.
Sarah	One book that I know um both of us read recently is You Are Fatally Invited.
Sarah	Would you consider that to be a biblio mystery? It has authors. um It’s more of a um domestic thriller or more of a thriller type setup. But I don’t know if I would put it in this category.
Brook	Yeah, I’m not sure that it completely meets Mr. Penzler’s criteria, but it’s definitely on the edge of that. And part of why I loved that book so much is the fact that these all these authors get together and…
Brook	And there there are lots of little references to writing or writer’s block and things like that that made the story really fun for somebody who is also an author but a book lover.
Sarah	So another cozy series is the Beyond the Page Mysteries written by Lauren Elliott. And the first book in that series is Murder by the Book. And sad news over the summer, we learned that Lauren Elliott actually died. But we can all enjoy her books still.
Brook	That is something wonderful about art in any form is that we can still honor those people who created it. So that’s a wonderful suggestion, Sarah. Well, one series that I’ve recently decided that I want to reread is the Cliff Janoway novels by John Dunning.
Brook	And the first one in that series is Booked to Die. It released in 1992. And these have very detective feel because ah Cliff Janoway is our a detective who ends up leaving the force and but to become a rare and collectible book dealer. And all the, I believe there are five books in the series and all of the stories revolve around him locating some mysterious or collectible rare book. And again, we talked about the clues that are within the text and they’re just really fantastic. And as I said, I’ve reread Booked to Die and I’m going to work my way through this series.
Sarah	Oh, that sounds really fun, Brook.
Brook	um And I also think it’s great to mention the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series by Vicki Delaney. She is, of course, a past guest. And this is going to meet the criteria because it’s set in the bookstore.
Brook	All the mysteries don’t necessarily have to do with books, but you’re in this… bookstore that you and I both said, man, I wish that was a real place. It’s the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium.
Brook	They have like the connected cafe that what is Mrs. Hudson’s cafe, I believe, where they have, you know, bakery goods. And yeah Vicki Delaney just creates this little world that I think we would all love to live in. Her sleuth is Gemma Doyle and who she might be related to Arthur Conan Doyle himself. So just a wonderful connection to to those older stories and a really fun series.
Sarah	That’s right, Brook. And yeah, that’s a great example of biblio mysteries. And absolutely, I would love to visit that shop if it existed.
Brook	Well, I found a couple of books to add to my TBR while I was researching this week. And one of them is the Blue Ridge Library Mysteries, which are written by Victoria Gilbert.
Brook	And they feature librarian Amy Weber solving crimes connected to, again, books, rare documents, and the library she manages in a small town. So that’s going to be a cozy read for me.
Brook	And then one is called a biblio noir. I think this sounds so good. The first book in this series is Murder at the 42nd Street Library.
Brook	This is by Con Lehane, and it’s a contemporary murder ah mystery series rooted in the New York Public Library system. And the cover features, you know, those great lion statues on ah at the front of the New York Public Library.
Brook	So as I mentioned at the top of the show, I’m a sucker for those big old buildings and especially library.
Sarah	I love that idea of a um noir set ah the at the New York Public Library. I also recently read The Library Game, which was published this year, 2025, by Gigi Pandian.
Sarah	It’s a locked room and closed circle mystery. It’s I think so third or fourth. Sorry, going to start that. It’s, I think, third or fourth in her series. And I hadn’t read the um the earlier books, but I was able to figure out who was who. She does a good job of kind of catching the reader up. And ah it’s all set in this library, this old house that has ah the owner has recently died and in his will instructed that his extensive book collection be made available as a library.
Sarah	And um the loved puzzles and so wanted it to be, um you know, kind of filled with hidden um hidden mysteries within the library. And it was it was, I really enjoyed the book. It was quite clever.
Brook	Oh, that sounds fantastic. I love the idea of somebody who has built this, you know, personal library, then sharing it with the world. It’s a little bit like the concept of the little free library, just on a grander scale.
Sarah	Exactly. And what a great legacy to leave for your community, you know, if you had amassed this collection of books, and, um you know, they wouldn’t, they didn’t need to build a new facility because it was his his home that was being turned into this library.
Brook	Yeah, that’s great. Maybe it’s an excuse to have a gigantic book collection so that you can say, well, hey, one of these days, I’m just going to let everybody come and share in on this.
Sarah	Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. And that will be the reason that I justify future book purchases is that I’m just, this is this is part of my legacy.
Brook	That’s right. We’re just building a legacy.
Sarah	Well, thank you, Brook, for this conversation. It’s always fun to talk about mystery. It’s especially fun to talk about mysteries about books.
Brook	Thanks, Sarah. It has been so great. And until next time, everyone, thank you for joining us on Clued in Mystery. I’m Brook.
Sarah	And I’m Sarah and we both love mystery.