'A bookshop is a first-rate place for unobtrusive observation,' he continued. 'One can remain in it an indefinite time, dipping into one book after another, all over the place.' Mr Richard Dodsley, owner of a fine second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road, has been found murdered in the cold hours of the morning. Shot in his own office, few clues remain besides three cigarette ends, two spent matches and a few books on the shelves which have been rearranged. In an investigation spanning the second-hand bookshops of London and the Houses of Parliament (since an MP’s new crime novel Death at the Desk appears to have some bearing on the case), Ferguson’s series sleuth MacNab is at hand to assist Scotland Yard in an atmospheric and ingenious fair-play bibliomystery, first published in 1937.
Author
John Ferguson (1871-1952) was a Scottish clergyman, playwright, and mystery writer. John Ferguson was born at Callander, Perthshire, but has made his home in many sharply contrasted places, from the misty isle of Skye to the sunlit island of Guernsey. And though now a resident in the New Forest near Lymington he lived for six years in the grim Dunimarle Castle in Fife, where Macduff's wife and child were murdered by Macbeth. As a dramatist Mr Ferguson is probably best known for his now famous play Campbell of Kilmohr, which at its first Royalty Theatre production was hailed by the dramatic critic of the Glasgow Herald as 'a new and significant type of Scottish drama'. Of John Ferguson's work one critic has said, 'As no two of his stories are in any sense repetitious, it is probably his practice of setting each tale against the background in which he writes that gives this variety in characterization and action to each of his works.' His books have been translated into many foreign languages, the latest of which is Turkish. In his story of the history and development of the detective story, Masters of Mystery, Douglas Thomson writes, 'Mr Ferguson is one of the most delightful stylists in this genre'.
