- Hardcover: 369 pages
- Publisher: James Bennett Pty Ltd (15 Mar 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743249925
- ISBN-13: 978-0743249928
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 16 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,644,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Cliff Janeway is back! "The Bookman's Promise" marks the eagerly awaited return of Denver bookman-author John Dunning and the award-winning crime novel series that helped to turn the nation on to first-edition book collecting.
First, it was "Booked to Die, " then "The Bookman's Wake." Now John Dunning fans, old and new, will rejoice in "The Bookman's Promise, " a richly nuanced new Janeway novel that juxtaposes past and present as Denver ex-cop and bookman Cliff Janeway searches for a book and a killer.
The quest begins when an old woman, Josephine Gallant, learns that Janeway has recently bought at auction a signed first edition by the legendary nineteenth-century explorer Richard Francis Burton. The book is a true classic, telling of Burton's journey (disguised as a Muslim) to the forbidden holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The Boston auction house was a distinguished and trustworthy firm, but provenance is sometimes murky and Josephine says the book is rightfully hers.
She believes that her grandfather, who was living in Baltimore more than eighty years ago, had a fabulous collection of Burton material, including a handwritten journal allegedly detailing Burton's undercover trip deep into the troubled American South in 1860. Josephine remembers the books from her childhood, but everything mysteriously disappeared shortly after her grandfather's death.
With little time left in her own life, Josephine begs for Janeway's promise: he must find her grandfather's collection. It's a virtually impossible task, Janeway suspects, as the books will no doubt have been sold and separated over the years, but how can he say no to a dying woman?
It seems that her grandfather, Charlie Warren, traveled south with Burton in the spring of 1860, just before the Civil War began. Was Burton a spy for Britain? What happened during the three months in Burton's travels for which there are no records? How did Charlie acquire his unique collection of Burton books? What will the journal, if it exists, reveal?
When a friend is murdered, possibly because of a Burton book, Janeway knows he must find the answers. Someone today is willing to kill to keep the secrets of the past, and Janeway's search will lead him east: To Baltimore, to a Pulitzer Prize-winning author with a very stuffed shirt, and to a pair of unorthodox booksellers. It reaches a fiery conclusion at Fort Sumter off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina.
What's more, a young lawyer, Erin d'Angelo, and ex-librarian Koko Bujak, have their own reasons for wanting to find the journal. But can Janeway trust them?
Rich with the insider's information on rare and collectible books that has made John Dunning famous, and with meticulously researched detail about a mesmerizing figure who may have played an unrecognized role in our Civil War, "The Bookman's Promise" is riveting entertainment from an extraordinarily gifted author who is as unique and special as the books he so clearly loves. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
If I wanted to be arbitrary, I could say it began anywhere. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
If I wanted to be arbitrary, I could say it began anywhere. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This inscription from explorer Richard Burton to his friend Charles Warren in a book Burton wrote in 1861 kicks off a literary mystery in which a contemporary former police detective, Cliff Janeway, comes to the rescue of a little old lady and makes her a promise. Jo Gallant, the aged granddaughter of Charles Warren, claims that this particular book, along with the rest of a substantial collection of Burton memorabilia, was stolen from her grandfather's estate eighty years ago. Janeway, now a "bookman" who buys and sells antique books, promises to find the collection and bring the culprits to justice, if any trace of them can be found.
As the search gets underway, author John Dunning inserts long historical recreation, in which Charlie Warren and Richard Burton travel together to Charleston and Fort Sumter in 1860, leading Charlie to suspect that Burton is spying for England, taking advantage of the pre-Civil War tumult in the Union. This story, based on Burton's notes and drawings, Charlie's journal, and a photograph of the two men, all part of the stolen memorabilia, fill the search for Jo Gallant's collection with color and historical excitement and give life to the friendship of Burton and Warren.
As the story of Charlie and Burton is further developed with Jo's recollections of her grandfather, as revealed under hypnosis, the old and the contemporary story intersect, and violence soon shatters the life of Janeway. A murder, a house fire, the theft of documents, the influence of the criminal underworld, sleazy book dealings, and beatings and mayhem keep the action quotient high as Janeway seeks the remainder of the collection and the killer of an innocent person.
Though the book is great fun to read, it relies heavily on coincidence to make connections between the stories. The reader is never allowed to forget the presence of an author who is actively pulling strings to keep the two-phased plot moving. The story does not evolve naturally out of the characters and their lives. Instead, the peripheral characters seem created for the purpose of moving the story in the "right" direction. This artificiality ultimately affects the reader's enjoyment of the story. The third novel in Dunning's five-novel Janeway series, The Bookman's Promise is fun to read for anyone who loves books, but it suffers from a lack of editing that might have improved the relationship between the two separate stories and tidied up the plot. n Mary Whipple
As the search gets underway, author John Dunning inserts long historical recreation, in which Charlie Warren and Richard Burton travel together to Charleston and Fort Sumter in 1860, leading Charlie to suspect that Burton is spying for England, taking advantage of the pre-Civil War tumult in the Union. This story, based on Burton's notes and drawings, Charlie's journal, and a photograph of the two men, all part of the stolen memorabilia, fill the search for Jo Gallant's collection with color and historical excitement and give life to the friendship of Burton and Warren.
As the story of Charlie and Burton is further developed with Jo's recollections of her grandfather, as revealed under hypnosis, the old and the contemporary story intersect, and violence soon shatters the life of Janeway. A murder, a house fire, the theft of documents, the influence of the criminal underworld, sleazy book dealings, and beatings and mayhem keep the action quotient high as Janeway seeks the remainder of the collection and the killer of an innocent person.
Though the book is great fun to read, it relies heavily on coincidence to make connections between the stories. The reader is never allowed to forget the presence of an author who is actively pulling strings to keep the two-phased plot moving. The story does not evolve naturally out of the characters and their lives. Instead, the peripheral characters seem created for the purpose of moving the story in the "right" direction. This artificiality ultimately affects the reader's enjoyment of the story. The third novel in Dunning's five-novel Janeway series, The Bookman's Promise is fun to read for anyone who loves books, but it suffers from a lack of editing that might have improved the relationship between the two separate stories and tidied up the plot. n Mary Whipple
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
In a number of ways, this book invites comparison with /The da Vinci Code/. There is the same use of a specialist profession and its particular knowledge (Dunning's protagonist is, like Dunning himself, a rare books dealer). There is a historical mystery (did Burton travel through the USA's southern states, immediately prior to the Civil War?) with hints of conspiracy (was he spying for a British government intent on fomenting conflict?), whose resolution entangles a contemporary thriller puzzle storyline with conspiracy elements of its own. There is a love interest subplot between two strong characters, a dash of betrayal, and innocent victims fall along the way.
But: /The Bookman's Promise/ is an infinitely better book than /The da Vinci Code/.
First and foremost, it's infinitely better written. Brown's book contains interesting fictions which could be developed, but then survives purely on the on the reader's willingness to suspend disbelief, be intrigued, and resist the urge to laugh. Dunning, on the other hand, holds a reader by his ability to tell a story well. Incidents in Brown's narrative are episodic pyrotechnics, with the story there only as a scaffold between them; in Dunning's they are embedded as part and parcel of the evolving story itself.
Then there are the characters who populate the book. Brown's characters are two dimensional cardboard cutouts with only just as much depth as is required to carry the events; they are not real. Dunning's characters, by contrast are rounded and alive; you have to care about them. Most of them are good, warm hearted people (though they have their share of failings), who care about one another; there are a couple of out and out villains, but for the most part the baddies are just fallible human beings with back stories built on feet of clay - even the central act of betrayal is a sordid accident bitterly regretted rather than a deliberate act.
Where I finished /The da Vinci Code/ despite an urge to bail out at the end of every chapter, resisting a constant tendency to fall asleep, /The Bookman's Promise/ drew me on through, constantly absorbed, from the first page to the last. This is despite the fact that I have a passing interest in some of the ideas in Brown's book but none whatsoever in the setting of Dunning's. I have not the faintest glimmer of interest in the rare books business, but I nevertheless felt Dunning's (and Janeway's) love of this trade seeping out of the pages and through my skin.
I'm left with the inescapable feeling that Dunning loves both the human race and what he does; that's a wonderful combination, rarer and more precious even than a Burton first edition. Janeway ends the book disappointed in his fidelity to his own promise, but Dunning lives up to his for me.
But: /The Bookman's Promise/ is an infinitely better book than /The da Vinci Code/.
First and foremost, it's infinitely better written. Brown's book contains interesting fictions which could be developed, but then survives purely on the on the reader's willingness to suspend disbelief, be intrigued, and resist the urge to laugh. Dunning, on the other hand, holds a reader by his ability to tell a story well. Incidents in Brown's narrative are episodic pyrotechnics, with the story there only as a scaffold between them; in Dunning's they are embedded as part and parcel of the evolving story itself.
Then there are the characters who populate the book. Brown's characters are two dimensional cardboard cutouts with only just as much depth as is required to carry the events; they are not real. Dunning's characters, by contrast are rounded and alive; you have to care about them. Most of them are good, warm hearted people (though they have their share of failings), who care about one another; there are a couple of out and out villains, but for the most part the baddies are just fallible human beings with back stories built on feet of clay - even the central act of betrayal is a sordid accident bitterly regretted rather than a deliberate act.
Where I finished /The da Vinci Code/ despite an urge to bail out at the end of every chapter, resisting a constant tendency to fall asleep, /The Bookman's Promise/ drew me on through, constantly absorbed, from the first page to the last. This is despite the fact that I have a passing interest in some of the ideas in Brown's book but none whatsoever in the setting of Dunning's. I have not the faintest glimmer of interest in the rare books business, but I nevertheless felt Dunning's (and Janeway's) love of this trade seeping out of the pages and through my skin.
I'm left with the inescapable feeling that Dunning loves both the human race and what he does; that's a wonderful combination, rarer and more precious even than a Burton first edition. Janeway ends the book disappointed in his fidelity to his own promise, but Dunning lives up to his for me.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This long-awaited third entry in Dunning's Cliff Janeway series picks up several months after the events of "the Grayson affair" (detailed in The Bookman's Wake). It starts with ex-cop turned bookdealer Janeway having taken the plunge into serious collecting, by paying a cool $27,000 for a rare volume by that superstar explorer and chronicler of the Victorian era, Richard Burton. This bold move, coupled with a subsequent interview on national radio brings him to the attention of all kinds of crackpots. One of these is a creaky old lady who swears that the book he bought belonged to her grandfather, who befriended Burton during his 1860 trip to the U.S. Janeway promises to look into the matter and is soon entangled in a highly convoluted story involving lost journals, unscrupulous book dealers and collectors, a nasty Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a sexy lawyer, and an investigation that will take him from Denver to Baltimore and Charleston.
The real mystery at the heart of the story is the old woman's claim that her grandfather and Burton traveled through the Southern United States together about a year before the outbreak of the Civil War. This is all recounted via the wildly silly device of audio tapes made of the woman while under hypnosis. The middle part of the book is told in the woman's grandfather's voice, who details this trip, alleging, among other things that it was Burton who had the original idea for moving the Union troops to Ft. Sumter (and thus was the Princip of the time), and that he fathered a child with a innkeeper's daughter! Oh yes, and they meet baseball's "inventor", Abner Doubleday. All of this is kind of cute and clever, and ably written, but somewhat superfluous to the story. There's no real reason to include this section other than to try and get the reader invested in the literary drama of the idea.
I quite liked the first Janeway book, found the second to be only so-so, and find this one is equally average. Part of the problem stems from Dunning falling into somewhat of a rut: in each book Janeway befriends various clever females who function as his sidekicks; in each book a very likeable character is killed, providing Janeway with ample motive to carry on and mete out justice; in each book there is at least one thuggish goon for Janeway to go mano-a-mano with; and in each book Janeway finds himself romantically entangled with a smart, gorgeous woman. In this case, it's not really apparent why the woman falls for Janeway, and so their charged banter never really makes a lot of sense. The goon who provides the frisson of tangible danger to the story is an utter cardboard psycho, and thus of very little interest. More problematically, when the murderer of the story is revealed at the end, it's ridiculously implausible and very unsatisfying. This book also has the classic "well, why don't they just go to the cops problem". At one point, the bad guys hold something over Janeway and use that as leverage to not go to the cops. But once Janeway and crew remove that particular lever, they never revisit the notion of going to the cops -- which might have saved some trouble in the end.
Ultimately, while I'm a fan of Burton, and enjoyed the idea of Dunning filling in this missing period of his life, the surrounding story never really captured me. In addition to the flaws outlined above, Janeway himself is getting a bit tired as a character. His wisecracking tough-guy schick wears thin pretty quickly, and his whole go-it-alone attitude becomes just as tiresome to the reader as it does to the various women who seem to find him so fascinating. I suppose I'll keep reading the series, but it appears that Dunning is forced to assemble ever more convoluted and preposterous plots to cast his book-loving hero upon.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
a fun read
The Bookman's Promise is the 3rd in John Dunning's Cliff Janeway series. With the windfall cash Cliff has from the Grayson business (see The Bookman's Wake), he decides to spend... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Cloggie Downunder
So who said he should write a story
John Dunning swapped the insider details of the book collector's world that peppered his first two Janeway novels (combined in BOOKED TO DIE) for an actual plot. Read more
Published on 28 Sep 2007 by J. A. Eyon
More great Dunning for book lovers!
The third book in John Dunning's "Cliff Janeway" series is another compulsive page-turner. If you've only just discovered this author I recommend you start at the beginning with... Read more
Published on 19 May 2007 by S. Barnes
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
