Mystery Man by Colin Bateman (Headline 2009)

'Bookselling is hard, ladies and gentlemen. It's relentless. The books just keep coming. Beans don't change, peas are peas are peas, but books are always evolving. There's bugger-all profit, the hours are extraordinary and the shoplifters are stupid, because you can just borrow the bloody things from the library. You can't borrow beans.'

I studied them. They studied me.

I nodded. 'No, sir,' I said, 'you can't borrow beans.'

Several guests, unfamiliar with my ways, glanced to the door, as if realising that they'd been hooked by a free sausage roll into attending a three-hour time-share sales pitch. Others, on more familiar territory, waited for me to get to the point. The Mayerovas never took their eyes off me.

'We do it because it's a labour of love,' I continued, 'we do it because we think it's important. And here, we do it because we like to champion the underdog, the bastard outcast of literature we like to call mystery fiction. I often say, give me a young man uncorrupted by the critics, and I will make him a crime aficionado for life.'

Alison cleared her throat. Feet shuffled. DI Robinson rose and fell.

I was not to be deterred. This was my time.

'I have made a lifelong study of crime fiction. I have read all of the great works, and most of the middling ones, and many of the minor ones, and a lot of trash besides. There is virtually nothing about the solving of fictional crimes that I do not know, and what are fictional crimes but factual crimes with hats on? It seemed only natural to me when, a few short months ago, I was asked to help solve a real-life mystery that I should combine what I have learned about crime as a reader, and human nature as a bookseller, in pursuit of a solution to a fiendishly difficult case. Since that first triumph I have investigated many mysteries that previously had confounded the forces of law and order, and there is not one that I have not solved. But my most testing case, my most harrowing, and without doubt my most dangerous, walked through these very doors just a matter of days ago and it concerned the man whom, together of course with our esteemed senile author, we have come here tonight to pay tribute to: Daniel Trevor.'

I pressed the miniature PowerPoint button in my hand, and a picture of Daniel Trevor appeared on the wall behind me. There were a few hushed oooohs from my captive audience. And they were captive. 

One of DI Robinson's undercover comrades had locked the front doors.

'Daniel Trevor . . . murdered last week.