Death of a Bookseller

January 30, 2023
Brogan Roach and Laura Bunting—the narrators of Slater’s bleak debut—meet when the new manager of the failing London bookstore branch at which caustic Roach has long worked hires chipper Laura to boost sales. The women are like oil and water: Roach wears only black and is obsessed with true crime, while Laura sports colorful berets and thinks true crime is “tacky, exploitative crap.” But when Roach learns that Laura writes poetry about murder victims because her mother fell prey to a notorious serial killer, Roach starts stalking Laura, desperate to convince her they share a “dark connection.” The harder Roach tries, the more her misguided actions repulse and terrify Laura, locking the two in a dangerous downward spiral that threatens mutual destruction. Roach and Laura alternate chapters, their first-person-present accounts imparting tension and urgency. Both characters feel a bit cartoonish in their melodrama, but on balance, Slater delivers a twisty exploration of society’s fascination with the macabre. Fans of Simone St. James’s The Book of Cold Cases, take note. Agent: Caroline Eisenmann, Frances Goldin Literary.

March 1, 2023
Slater's darkly comic debut follows the increasingly uneasy relations between two co-workers who have very different investments in true crime. "I've always had a thing for death," confesses Brogan Roach. Though she works at Spines Walthamstow, a failing branch of a bookstore with other locations around London, she finds her true vocation as a zealous reader, researcher, and follower of true-crime stories and podcasts, looking down her nose at self-avowed fans who flinch from the nasty details that are her meat and drink. When Laura Bunting arrives at the shop in connection with new manager Sharona's attempt to raise it from the dying, Roach is first struck by Laura's instant antipathy toward her, then transfixed by the poems Laura presents at a local reading, then increasingly entranced by this woman who makes it clear that she wants nothing to do with her. They must be sisters under the skin, Roach reasons, and in her own way she's quite correct, for Laura's connected to Roach's passion in the worst way possible: Ten years ago, her mother became the final victim of the Stow Strangler. Police officer Lee Frost was convicted and imprisoned long ago for four of the Strangler's five murders, but Laura continues to be as haunted by her death as Roach is by all those other deaths she can't get enough of. Slater spins a compelling tale of Roach's fatal fascination with Laura, but the tale unfolds with remarkably few twists, and the ones that come will surprise only newcomers to the genre. The highly ambivalent ending will please devotees of Schr�dinger's cat while leaving others out in the cold. One modest bonus: You may never feel the same way about bookstores again.

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April 1, 2023
Brogan Roach is a bookseller and true-crime junkie who enjoys listening to her favorite podcast, The Murder Girls, and caring for her pet snail, Bleep. She is also a loner with a passion for reading about murder and death. Her life is inexplicably changed when a new employee, Laura Bunting, joins the staff at Brogan's store, Spines. Normally, Brogan avoids what she calls Pumpkin Spice Girls, the type of women who order complicated drinks at coffee houses, but she is intrigued by Laura's beauty, impeccable style, and passionate poetry. However, Laura is completely uninterested in befriending Brogan, who turns her fantasy of friendship into a dangerous obsession. Slater's debut is a very dark, character-driven, slow-burn suspense novel. Both Laura and Brogan are intriguingly flawed characters who have different stories to tell but who also have a lot in common. Through their alternating perspectives, Slater explores the ethics surrounding our obsession with true crime and questions how we should handle other people's stories. This highly original, whip-smart first novel will have crime lovers second-guessing their next read.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.