A good way to spend an autumn afternoon

My last post was about buying new books. It’s a great pleasure, but perhaps not quite such a pleasure as a trip to a second book shop and finding books that you didn’t even know you wanted as well as some that you did.

Last Friday I needed cheering up and, as I had to drive out into the Peak District anyway, I went to Peak Volumes in Tideswell. It is strong  contender for my very favourite second hand bookshop. There was new stock in since I last visited and I was very pleased to find two green Penguin editions of Max Murray’s The Doctor and the Corpse and Royal Bed for a Corpse. He wrote a number of crime novels with ‘Corpse’ in the title and lovely Galileo Publishers have reprinted a couple – but not these two. I do already have a copy of the Agatha Christie, but not with this striking cover by Tom Adams. And I have been enjoying dipping into T. J. Binyon’s book on the Detective in Fiction. All in all this was a splendid haul for a very reasonable price. Charity shops do have their place and I have made some memorable purchases in them, but there is nothing like an old-fashioned second-hand bookshop with a book-loving owner always ready for a chat.

A pot of Earl Grey and a toasted teacake in the cafe across the road and my afternoon was complete.

Outside the shop there is always a board with a quotation on it and visitors are invited to say where it comes from. So far I have guessed correctly and sometimes it IS just a guess. But I did know this one: ‘It was a queer sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I doing in New York.’ A striking opening from a writer who only published one novel. Who is it? I expect my erudite readers will know! Answers below, please.