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| The Case of the Missing Books (Mobile Library Mysteries) |
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List Price: $12.95
Our Price: $11.01
You Save: $ 1.94 (15%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780060822507
ISBN: 0060822503
Label: Harper Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Release Date: 2007-01-02
Studio: Harper Paperbacks
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Editorial Reviews:
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Israel Armstrong is a passionate soul, lured to Ireland by the promise of an exciting new career. Alas, the job that awaits him is not quite what he had in mind. Still, Israel is not one to dwell on disappointment, as he prepares to drive a mobile library around a small, damp Irish town. After all, the scenery is lovely, the people are charming—but where are the books? The rolling library's 15,000 volumes have mysteriously gone missing, and it's up to Israel to discover who would steal them . . . and why. And perhaps, after that, he will tackle other bizarre and perplexing local mysteries—like, where does one go to find a proper cappuccino and a decent newspaper?
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| Spotlight customer reviews: |
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Mobile Library Mystery
Comment: The Case of the Missing Books (2006) introduces Israel Armstrong, a Jewish vegetarian from London, who is hired as head librarian by the village of Tumdrum, Northern Ireland. When Ian arrives in the small damp village he discovers that the library has been closed and that his accommodations are a drafty chicken coop complete with resident chickens. The council provides him with an ancient mobile library--an empty bus with no shelves or books. Ian's hilarious struggles to comprehend the local variety of English and avoid eating pork products while navigating the unnamed maze of back roads in search of the missing 15,000 library books make this traditional mystery a fun read.
http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/S_Authors/Sansom_Ian.html
Customer Rating:
Summary: Gotta Love Israel
Comment: I was surprised to read so many negative reviews for this book because I enjoyed it so much. It is not a "high action" book but if you like a farce with the eccentric-est of characters, definitely check this book out.
This book definitely has a rythm that it takes a chapter or two to get into, but once there, I found it difficult to put down. The mystery itself is so silly that the solving of it became an obsession for me, and I was definitely stumped at the end. It's a wry sort of Brit humour you'll find in these pages, but I suggest you definitely go looking. What an enjoyable read!
And I have to see that I have a strong desire to find a mobile library at the moment as a result of reading this pleasant, diverting book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Major Disappointment
Comment: This book is 326 pages long. I gave up after the first 100, in which NOTHING has happened. I take that back: by page 100, librarian Israel Armstrong - one of the more dislikeable protagonists I have met in any mystery - has discovered that all his books are missing. I no longer care. The book is meant to be funny, and if you don't insist on character development, a sense of place and a plot, it may be, in a slapstick sort of way.
Apparently, people are suggesting this book to readers who enjoy the novels of Alexander McCall Smith, which I do. Smith, however, develops his characters, making them appealing and believable. Author Ian Sansom, I fear, does not.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "Spoiler" to follow... if something this rotten can spoil...
Comment: 'The Case of the Missing Books' by Ian Sansom was irritating, lacked poetry and mystery and, in the end, was 311 pages too long.
It's the story of an English man who travels to Ireland to be librarian to a small community library. When he gets there, he discovers that not only is the library closed, but all the books are missing. It becomes his job to recover the fifteen thousand missing volumes.
What could've been a charming short story is drawn out into a painful novel. The 'hero' of our story, Israel Armstrong, has nothing to recommend him to the reader. He's awkward and dim and stupidly oblivious to the simplest rules of human interaction and self-respect. The people of the village tend towards one-dimension: angry landlady, gluttonous boss, sneering co-worker. And yet, it's the people of the village who banded together to keep the books circulating when the library closed. How can you not be charmed by an entire village taking over the circulation and maintenance of their library?
Instead of taking fifteen to twenty pages to introduce us to the village of Tumdrum and tell us the story of the villagers who care so much for reading that they steal fifteen thousand books to keep them circulating to shut-ins, children and others, Mr. Sansom forces us into the company of a dim-witted whiner with nothing to contribute to the world but his love of books. (And how can it be that a man can spend his life reading and learn nothing of life?)
Don't read this book. Please. Take those two or three hours to go to your local library -- speak to a librarian there and see if you can't discover an author who can show you quirky, small-town life at its best. I'm sure there are a few out there.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Erm Erm Erm
Comment: As a voracious reader, the premise of this book immediately caught my attention: who, I wondered, would steal 15,000 books from an obscure library in Ireland? And could there be a more unlikely protagonist than the town's new librarian, Israel Armstrong, to try to track them down? Israel - a tubby, bespectacled Jewish vegetarian - is almost Chaplin-esque in the succession of quirky setbacks and even quirkier helpmates he encounters in his new surroundings. Unfortunately, there are so many of them that the book has a repetitive feel that also makes the core conflict slow to get off the ground. While there were several laugh out loud moments and clever turns of phrase, I think Sansom's editors at HarperCollins could have done a tighter job of editing what could have been a much more cohesive storyline.
Christina Hamlett
Author of "Could It Be a Movie"
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