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Product Description
Review
“…the dialogue is certainly amusing. Readers who enjoy send-ups of crime novels, talk-radio hosts, city pomposities and rural eccentricities will queue up for the series…” (Kirkus Reviews )
“[THE BOOK STOPS HERE] succeeds as a light farce . . . The book’s high point is the acerbic portrayal of the personalities making up the Mobile Library Steering Committee, but most every page will elicit a grin, if not a chuckle.” (Publishers Weekly )
“[Sansom’s] fish-out-of-water dilemmas and encounters with kooky locals will resonate with Alexander McCall Smith fans” (Publishers Weekly )
“[a] comic masterpiece” (The Belfast Telegraph )
“A work of tender and bonhomous refraction. ...Sansom is emphatically unpretentious in his portrayal of the ordinary lives of ordinary folk, and his gentle humor buoys their humdrum lives…pleasing, amusing and honest.” (New York Newsday )
“A wonderfully comic novel...Ian Sansom has an acute sense of the absurd, and does not allow sympathetic intimacy to stand in the way of some wicked barbs.” (Daily Mail (London) )
“A humane, big-hearted and sometimes devastatingly funny book.” (LA Weekly )
“A clever, affectionate poke in the ribs…. Sansom...discovers an exceptionally lively world.” (Kirkus Reviews )
“An endearing first novel...People cross paths, hook up, split up, say good-bye. Narrative unity derives less from the story than from the amiable persona of the narrator himself, in all his rambling, digressive warmth, and his mild insistence throughout (Daily Telegraph (London) )
“[THE BOOK STOPS HERE] succeeds as a light farce . . . The book’s high point is the acerbic portrayal of the personalities making up the Mobile Library Steering Committee, but most every page will elicit a grin, if not a chuckle.” (Publishers Weekly )
“[Sansom’s] fish-out-of-water dilemmas and encounters with kooky locals will resonate with Alexander McCall Smith fans” (Publishers Weekly )
“[a] comic masterpiece” (The Belfast Telegraph )
“A work of tender and bonhomous refraction. ...Sansom is emphatically unpretentious in his portrayal of the ordinary lives of ordinary folk, and his gentle humor buoys their humdrum lives…pleasing, amusing and honest.” (New York Newsday )
“A wonderfully comic novel...Ian Sansom has an acute sense of the absurd, and does not allow sympathetic intimacy to stand in the way of some wicked barbs.” (Daily Mail (London) )
“A humane, big-hearted and sometimes devastatingly funny book.” (LA Weekly )
“A clever, affectionate poke in the ribs…. Sansom...discovers an exceptionally lively world.” (Kirkus Reviews )
“An endearing first novel...People cross paths, hook up, split up, say good-bye. Narrative unity derives less from the story than from the amiable persona of the narrator himself, in all his rambling, digressive warmth, and his mild insistence throughout (Daily Telegraph (London) )
Book Description
Israel Armstrong—the hapless duffle coat wearing, navel-gazing librarian who solves crimes and domestic problems whilst driving a mobile library around the north coast of Ireland—finds himself on the brink of thirty. But any celebration, planned or otherwise, must be put on hold when a troubled teenager—the daughter of a local politician—mysteriously vanishes. Israel suspects the girl's disappearance has something to do with his lending her American Pastoral from the library's special "Unshelved" category. Now he has to find the lost teen before he's run out of town—while he attempts to recover from his recent breakup with his girlfriend, Gloria, and tries to figure out where in Tumdrum a Jewish vegetarian might celebrate his thirtieth birthday.
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.2 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gloria Eat Your Heart Out, Feb 6 2010
By J. Nichols - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Bad Book Affair (Paperback)
The best part of this series of very funny mysteries-without-murder is how the characters really blossom over time so that over time Sansom challenges every stereotype in your head, while reinforcing them at the same time. Israel, the only Jewish vegetarian mobile librarian in Northern Ireland, bumbles through another human mystery. And it's a laugh a minute despite dealing with scandal, death, funerals, refugees, and censorship.And there's always Ted, the man with the unnatural love for the mobile library's van.
If you haven't read a Mobile Library mystery yet, buy 'em all and start at the beginning. Soon, you may join me in checking weekly for word of the next book.
And if you have read the rest of the series, there's news of Gloria in this one that you won't wanna miss.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Leopold Bloom drives North, Feb 6 2010
By D. P. Birkett - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Bad Book Affair (Paperback)
A mobile librarian in Northernmost Northern Ireland, who is Jewish and English, allows a fourteen year old daughter of a local politician to borrow Roth's American Pastoral and is accused of corrupting her mind and abducting her. That's about as much sex and suspense as you'll get. This isn't going to make you bite your nail and turn the pages wondering what will happen next, but turning the pages is well worth it for the humor and local color. The scenery and religion and atmosphere of Ulster are vividly brought to life. It's got a lot of parallels with the American Bible belt. There isn't a catholic in sight. The local Presbyterian minister is suspected of being too liberal.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
terrific satire, Jan 22 2010
By Harriet Klausner - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Bad Book Affair (Paperback)
Mobile librarian Israel Armstrong reaches Tumdrum, in Northern Ireland to allow locals to borrow books. The next day, Israel is open for business thanks to his coop mate Ted's nagging. Fourteen year old Lyndsay Morris borrows an adult only Roth's American Pastoral that she knows her parents especially her politically ambitious father Maurice would ban from their home.When Lyndsay disappears, the local cops and the media believe Israel abducted her. Library director Linda Wei holds Israel culpable for lending a bad book to a child. Tabloid journalist Veronica threatens to turn him into red meat for a pack of rapid reporters and Maurice goes after him as a tool to regain his lost political seat. His traveling partner in the chicken coop Ted throws him out into the cold suggesting he get to work.
If you seek a strong amateur sleuth, don't bother with the Bad Book Affair as the whodunit investigation is at best a modest proposal. However, if you seek a terrific satire that skewers the lofty affectations and posturing of political, media, and religious leaders by lampooning their holier than thou prejudices and sham social issues (for instance ban the book), than The Book Stops Here. Fans who enjoy a wild witty swift impaling of the self-aggrandizing will want to read the latest adventures of the innocent Israel.
Harriet Klausner
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