We are paying tribute to the best of us this week. The booksellers. Keepers of the flame, beacons in the night, purveyors of meaning in a cold, dark universe … usually.
Alice Slater used to be a member of that celebrated guild, now she’s written about the light and dark side of the trade in her debut smash, Death of a Bookseller. It pulls back the curtain on an industry we all care deeply about, to reveal the obsession, madness and … murder(?) behind the chai lattes and instagram posts.
In this conversation we cover a lot of ground… from the problems inherent in True Crime, book-fetishization, and the weird empathy we feel for serial killers’ pets. Plus, I get to talk about my favourite things (see: everything mentioned so far) with someone who genuinely once worked in my local bookshop.
This was a blast.
Death of a Bookseller was published on April 25th by Hodder and Scarlet
Other books mentioned:
- Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession (2019), by Rachel Monroe
- The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (2019), by Hallie Rubenhold
- You (2014), by Caroline Kepnes
- Gone Girl (2012), by Gillian Flynn
- The Last House on Needless Street (2021), by Catriona Ward
- The Sluts (2004), by Dennis Cooper
- Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke (2021), by Eric LaRocca
- Echo (2022), by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
