The genre called mysteries or detective fiction is second only to romance as the most popular category of fiction lent by public libraries. That said, the implications are far more wide‐ranging than that. This is something this book makes clear and this makes it relevant to several different groups of readers – librarians managing (selecting, acquiring, and ensuring the access of) collections, specialists curating rare book collections, authors turning to libraries for research information, academics investigating links between law and crime, and popular culture, and groups of readers sharing their love of detection at regular meetings in the library. As if to show the perfect fusion, there are even mysteries with librarians as central characters!
Managing the Mystery Collection fulfils all these roles and as a result is particularly valuable addition to its field. It is clear right from the start that library managers play two important roles – readers’ advisory in helping users choose what to read, and selection and acquisition in ensuring that what is wanted can ideally be made available to them. As Barbara Fister says, in her essay on how and why mystery writers use (and should use) libraries to help them get their facts right, we understand the field best when we see it as the interaction between authors and librarians, booksellers and publishers, and readers themselves. Indeed, so challenging (and correct) is this statement that it is a pity that publishers are not formally represented in the book, though much information on them can be found in sources like Publishers Weekly and elsewhere.
Taking readers’ advisory first, several essays in the book discuss the range and appeal of different types of mystery (for convenience, and without pedantry, used to cover a wide variety within the genre). Examples are Bluemel's essay on selecting mysteries for young people (she likes Lois Duncan's Don't Look Behind You, 1990, for instance), Allen's essay on cross‐overs between mystery and romance (with an emphasis on Janet Evanovich and read‐alikes), and Van Fleet's essay on African‐American mysteries (picking up on key themes and their cultural context, with plenty of examples). Turning then to the managerial role, we find essays on review sources for mystery fiction (useful guidance on journals like Library Journal and Deadly Pleasures, and websites like The Mystery Reader and Cluelass, the second of which includes a “blood‐stained bookshelf” and “deadly directory” for further research), and other essays on buying online (with key vendors, dealing with want lists, credit card payments, and pricing) and building and weeding collections.
Taking us further are two essays on special collections, one the Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Public Library, and the other the Sherlock Holmes Collection at the University of Minnesota Library. In both essays, we hear how they started and grew, often by donation and through the enthusiasm of groups of friends. Publicity is clearly important for the successful growth of such collections, since housing, cataloguing, and curating materials like rare books and art‐work (like Paget illustrations to Doyle), and encouraging scholarly and bibliographical work based on such collections, is critical to their survival. Linked with these issues is the role of these groups of friends, formal “friends” of the library in some cases, as at Toronto, and in others enthusiasts meeting more informally, like Sisters in Crime. This group was founded by Sara Paretsky in 1986 to promote mysteries written by women, and it now has a presence in the American Library Association and through its Books in Print (distributed to libraries) promotes women's writing within the genre. Kathy Harig writes an essay on this and is library liaison for the group.
A final turn of the dice in the book is that of scholarly interest in mysteries and detection. This takes various forms too – the literary and cultural examination of works (including films and television) in the field, sociology associated with perceptions of crime and the law in society and literature and the media, and legal interest in how lawyers and the legal process are represented. All these are well‐established fields in their own right, and it is right that Managing the Mystery Collection acknowledges that. The Popular Culture Association, which started life in 1971, has promoted interest in these issues, confirming how people with different concerns about popular culture and women's and ethnic studies seem to converge on the area. The references to this review point forward to some of the leads worth following. A classic collection in the area of law, crime, literature, and popular culture is the Law in Popular Culture Collection at the University of Texas School of Law (a good source of more material, some online).
This is a book, then, which though modest in scope, is full of fertile leads and good information. It is rather piecemeal and critically uneven, but Overmier and Taylor (both of the University of Oklahoma and both aficionados) have assembled an interesting collection of ideas on the subject, worth studying and pursuing by anyone interested – professionally and personally – in how crime and the fight between good and bad continue to exert a fascination for the reading public and the librarians and curators who try to provide effective services for them. The book was simultaneously published as Collection Management, Vol. 29 No. 3‐4 in 2004.
