From the category archives:
HOUND
“Death was, after all, the way Henry made his living…”
Hound is a new mystery novel from Small Beer Press. It is the first of a series of novels featuring Henry Sullivan, and the debut novel of a long-time Boston bookseller, Vincent McCaffrey. It is a paean to books, bookselling, and the transformative power of the printed word. Even as it evolves into a gripping murder mystery, it is also a reminder that there are still quiet corners of the world where the rhythms of life are calmer, where there’s still time for reading, time for getting out for a beer with friends, time to investigate the odd details of lives lived on the edges of the book world.
A bookhound, Henry Sullivan buys and sells books he finds at estate auctions and library sales around Boston and often from the relatives of the recently deceased. He’s in his late thirties, single, and comfortably set in his ways. But when a woman from his past, Morgan Johnson, calls to ask him to look at her late husband’s books, he is drawn into the dark machinations of a family whose mixed loyalties and secret history will have fatal results.
As the story unfolds, its mysteries are also of the everyday sort: love found and love lost, life given and life taken away. At the center is Henry himself, with his troubled relationships and his love of old books. There’s his landlady Mrs. Prowder whose death unsettles Henry’s life and begins the sequence of events that overturns it. There’s the secret room his friend Albert discovers while doing refuse removal, a room that reveals the story of a woman who lived and loved a century ago.
And throughout the novel are those of us whose lives revolve around books: the readers, writers, bookstore people, and agents—as well as Henry, the bookhound, always searching for the great find, but usually just getting by, happy enough to be in the pursuit.
Read what others are saying:
“Vincent McCaffrey’s debut mystery is crammed with stories, with likable, eccentric characters, much like his marvelous Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop—of all the bookstores in the world, the one I still miss most of all. Like all good mysteries, Hound concerns more than murder: it’s rich in detail and knowledgeable asides about bookselling, the world of publishing, and life lived in the pubs, shabby apartments, penthouses, and strange corners of the city of Boston.”
—Kelly Link, author of Pretty Monsters
“McCaffrey, the owner of Boston’s legendary Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop, succeeds in conveying his love of books in his intriguing debut. Boston bibliophile Henry Sullivan, who leads a lonely life in pursuit of rare books, attracts police attention after the strangulation murder of Morgan Johnson, the widow of a renowned literary agent—and Sullivan’s former lover. Not long before, Morgan retained Sullivan to appraise her late husband’s book collection that she was planning to donate to Boston University. Johnson’s husband’s relatives, each with a financial motive to have done her in, make up the small circle of logical suspects. Meanwhile, the reappearance of an old girlfriend forces Sullivan to consider another missed opportunity at happiness. Indeed, the crime-solving remains secondary to the author’s sensitive portrayal of his middle-aged protagonist’s search for meaning, suggesting this novel could’ve worked as well as straight fiction without the whodunit plot.”
—Publishers Weekly
“McCaffrey’s bookseller, Henry Sullivan, is as endearing, frustrating, and compelling a character I’ve come across in some time. Hound is more than Henry’s show, however. It’s a slow burn murder mystery, a sharp character study, a detailed exploration of Boston, and a mediation on the secrets of history—both personal and universal. But I’m wasting our precious time trying to pigeonhole his wonderful first novel. Hound is, quite simply, a great book.”
—Paul Tremblay, author of The Little Sleep.
You can pick up a copy of Hound today at: Small Beer Press
To find out more, peruse the posts below.
In olden times they had simpler methods. They tied one end of a rope to each of your limbs and then attached the other end to four individual horses pointed in different directions and made the horses giddyup all at once. Today they make you stand in front of a gathering of potential readers and explain why the hell you asked them to show up at their local independent bookshop instead of staying home to watch Jeopardy.
I’ve noticed I am not the only reader who watches Jeopardy.
I have done three readings now (not counting the short spiel I gave during a ‘speed dating’ event to eleven tables filled with mystery lovers during the Bouchercon in Indianapolis). To my great regret and perhaps that of most of those who attended, I don’t think I am improving enough with each ordeal. I have difficulty modulating my voice. My…
Speechify. It might surprise some of you that this is an actual word, well defined in the Webster’s Third International, Random House, and American Heritage dictionaries. It goes back to at least the early 1700’s and has been commonly used in America ever since. My North Carolina mountains grandfather used it more than once in my presence. And looking up this word to confirm its legitimacy is just the kind of thing I will do a hundred times between now and that fateful evening when I have to give a speech of sorts to a small gathering (hopefully not too small, but then again, not too large either) of friends and the merely curious who appear at my first ‘reading’ for the novel HOUND. Looking up words and doing ‘research’ has always been a good ploy to avoid harder work–like practicing aloud before a mirror.
The first and last time…
HOUND is at the printer and soon to be shipped! Anyone interested may ask their local bookshop to order copies for them, or you may order it directly from Avenue Victor Hugo Books: $24 (Massachusetts residents must pay 6.25% tax–$1.50) plus $3.25 media mail shipping–no extra shipping charge on additional copies. I will happily sign each copy ordered directly unless forbidden to. Order from: books@avenuevictorhugobooks.com. Checks or Paypal accepted.
I have been reading mystery and crime fiction since I was twelve and first discovered Mr. Holmes. The contest of good and evil was a fine caution for a teenage mind bent on breaking the rules. I did study the genre briefly in the 1970’s for the purpose of developing a mystery magazine to complement the science fiction monster that was swallowing me then, but that came to naught and in general I do not like to spend my time watching the sausage get made. I just happily eat it. When I made the decision to write a fiction about the death of the book some years ago, I quickly adopted the mystery genre as the right vehicle for the getaway. It was then that I decided to catch up with what had been going on since Travis McGee took permanent retirement.
In short, very few detectives drive…
BookExpo America (BEA) is the spring fashion show of the printed word. My publisher, Small Beer Press, has cunningly contrived to have my novel Hound available at this annual convention in the bound proofs (‘advance reading copy’ also known as ARCs) to gain some needed attention before the actual publication date in September.
You fall in love. You get married. Your first child is born. Your second child. Your third. These are the common blessings and the greatest thrills of life. I am not saying that this is in that order of magnitude, but still better than your first kiss, first home, or first car. On a par with your first crop perhaps, after a season of struggle and all that comes before that to make the struggle possible.
I have seen the bound ‘advance uncorrected proof’ of the Hound.
On Saturday morning, after a fitful sleep, I…
Now, lets see.
I’m trying to write a series of novels to address some concerns I have, and do so in an entertaining fashion while sharing some intimate awareness of why I think the concerns are very real. Now you’d like me to address some of those key issues outside of those novels.
Hemm.
The quick answer is no.
The almost as quick answer is to tell you to read the Crepuscule, posted elsewhere on this site, and ask you to apply some of your own brain sweat to the issues.
But for the sake of a more catholic awareness, let me draw your attention to a few overarching aspects of these issues that I will probably never get around to specifically writing a book about.
The spirit of a free market in an open society is that capital can be gathered and brought…
Talking to myself and trying to get some answers about the Hound.
Why did you write this book?
I had a story in mind about the death of the book after 500 hundred years and what that meant. This medium has changed everything, more than any other since the invention of fire, and the world it created is dependent on the book in ways which have become subtle through the familiarity of everyday use. It seemed most odd to me that the very people who depended on the book the most are least aware of its demise.
What do you mean? More books are published today than ever before.
That’s illusory. Most books today are not the product of individual minds but of machines. They are manuals. Directions. Instruction. Recipes. Tools for education. Lists. Data. This is all material which can be recorded by machines and reported by machines.…
The theme of the Hound is the death of the book. It seemed an obvious concept to me at the beginning: to use the lives of individuals faced with this cataclysm as a means of revealing its true magnitude.
I made several false starts before realizing a problem. The simpler the theme, the more difficult the story.
And certainly, writing a book to present such a theme is inherently ironic. But then irony is a part of the human comedy–as it is in the catching of whales, Ahab might have said at the last. More to the point, the game is afoot. The murder is happening now.
I have already mentioned here, in ‘The Hound and its consequences,’ why I chose the mystery genre. However, there is one thing I did not say before on that subject, because I thought it was too provocative to put forward…
The predicate for this web site is the publication of a novel, Hound, by Small Beer Press in the fall. I would not have attempted to establish this forum just now if the suggestion had not been made repeatedly that I needed to create some greater context for that book. Who was I after all, and why should anyone read yet another mystery by an unknown author?
