The Forgotten Pleasure of the Smell of Books

One of the pleasures of collecting old books has nothing to do with the words printed on their pages. Long before reading the first sentence, there is another experience that cannot be reproduced by an e-book or even by many modern paperbacks: the smell of the book itself.

Anyone who collects vintage crime paperbacks knows this feeling. Open a well-preserved Pocket Books, Pan or Penguin edition from the 1940s or 1950s and you are greeted by a distinctive aroma produced by aging paper, ink and glue. It is difficult to describe precisely, but it immediately evokes second-hand bookshops, private libraries and decades of reading history.

Smell has a unique ability to awaken memory. A familiar scent can instantly bring back places, people or moments that seemed long forgotten. Old books work in much the same way. Their distinctive aroma often reminds us of the first time we discovered a favourite author, afternoons spent browsing bookshops, or the excitement of finding a long-sought edition.

Of course, the value of a book lies in its contents rather than its smell. Yet the physical object is also part of the reading experience. The worn covers, yellowed pages and characteristic scent remind us that these books have survived generations of readers. They have travelled through time before reaching our shelves.

For collectors of vintage crime fiction, this is part of the charm. Reading an old paperback by writers such as James M. Cain, Lionel White or Patricia Highsmith in its original or early edition is a different experience from reading a modern reprint. The story may be identical, but the object itself carries a history that enhances the pleasure of reading.

Peter Lovesey - The False Inspector Dew

I like good classic English whodunits, although there are very few of them. This 1983 novel was a pleasant surprise.

Although it’s written in the style of the 1920s, it actually plays with the genre itself. It is based on the real-life case of Dr. Crippen, but the story follows Baranov, a dentist, and his wife Lydia, who plans to travel to America to try her luck in films. Things become complicated when Baranov meets Alma, a somewhat eccentric girl who sees the world through the lens of romantic novels. She falls in love with him, and together they devise a plan to kill Lydia and throw her into the river.

However, another murder occurs on the ship. Baranov, traveling under the false name Walter Dew, is mistakenly taken for the famous inspector. The ship’s captain accepts him as an authority and asks him to lead the investigation.

This is where the novel becomes truly interesting—not because of the question “who is the killer,” but because of how a man, simply through his behavior and confidence, manages to convince everyone around him that he is someone else.

One Deadly Summer - Sebastian Japrisot

I watched the French film One Deadly Summer starring Isabelle Adjani and it stayed with me. There’s something about that story that doesn’t let go, a quiet unease that lingers long after it ends.

So I looked up the novel of the same name by Sébastien Japrisot.

As you may have known, it's a story of a young girl Elle who seeks revenge on three men that raped her mother years ago in one winter day.

The first half of the novel is very good. The atmosphere is dense, the characters feel real, and the story moves in a direction that promises a lot. There’s that slow, summery feeling with something dark underneath.

But as the novel goes on, it becomes strange. As if it starts to fall apart from within.

It increasingly feels like this is not just a story about one girl, but about a tragedy passed down from generation to generation. Something that cannot be avoided, only repeated.

The saddest part is what happens to Elle. It’s as if she retreats back into childhood, losing touch with reality, until she eventually ends up in a mental institution.

In the end, it feels like everything was predetermined.

Charles Willeford - Hoke Moseley Omnibus

Charles Willeford is often described as a kind of “Philip K. Dick of crime fiction.” Just as Philip K. Dick created strange, off-kilter worlds in science fiction, Willeford brings bizarre situations and unusual characters into the crime novel, often subverting the expectations of the genre.

The series about detective Hoke Moseley is particularly interesting in that respect.

Miami Blues is perhaps the best-known novel in the series, largely because of the unforgettable villain Frederick Junior Frenger. He is one of those criminals who seems completely unpredictable and dangerous, which gives the novel both energy and dark humor.

New Hope for the Dead was somewhat less interesting to me. Much of the plot revolves around old unsolved cases that Moseley has to reopen, and the pace therefore feels slower than in the first novel.

I liked Sideswipe the most. The premise itself is unusual: Moseley suddenly decides to move into a hotel run by his father in order to get away from everything for a while. At the same time another storyline unfolds involving a bizarre group of characters planning a supermarket robbery: a psychopathic small-time criminal, a confused retiree who no longer knows what to do with his life, a prostitute with a disfigured face, and a Black painter. This strange combination of characters gives the novel an almost grotesque tone.

The Way We Die Now is also good, particularly because of Moseley’s undercover assignment and the interesting character of a former convict who, after being released from prison, moves into a house across the street from him.

What I would criticize is Willeford’s somewhat dry writing style. Also, the edition I read from Orion Books is a paperback, which is not ideal for a book of more than 800 pages—something of that length would have been much better in hardcover.

Amanda Cross - Death In A Tenured Position

Death in a Tenured Position is a crime novel written by Amanda Cross, the pseudonym of literature professor Carolyn Heilbrun.

The novel tells the story of the first woman to receive a tenured position at a formerly all-male college. Instead of triumph, she is met with indifference, passive aggression, and institutional coldness. The mystery element is present, but atmosphere dominates — a pervasive sense of isolation, academic vanity, and quiet cruelty. In the end, it is revealed that her death was not a murder but a suicide, which casts the entire narrative in a darker and more unsettling light.

Heilbrun herself was a distinguished scholar and feminist critic who taught for many years at Columbia University. Throughout her academic career, she spoke openly about the subtle and overt discrimination women faced within universities, particularly in elite institutions that were slow to accept women as intellectual equals. Under the name Amanda Cross, she used detective fiction not only as entertainment but as a vehicle to explore gender politics, professional exclusion, and the emotional cost of institutional resistance.

Late in life, Heilbrun chose to end her own life at the age of seventy-seven. While it would be simplistic to read the novel as autobiographical, the themes of isolation, aging, autonomy, and the pressures placed upon accomplished women inevitably resonate more strongly in light of her personal history.