Jim's Books

The Case of the Missing Books

Ian Sansom

The Case of the Missing Books
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ISBN: 9780007206995

Description

Israel is an intelligent, shy, passionate, sensitive sort of soul: he's Jewish; he's a vegetarian; he could maybe do with losing a little weight. And he's just arrived in Ireland to take up his first post as a librarian. But the library's been shut down and Israel ends up stranded on the North Antrim coast driving an old mobile library.

There's nice scenery, but 15,000 fewer books than there should be. Who on earth steals that many books? How? When would they have time to read them all? And is there anywhere in this godforsaken place where he can get a proper cappuccino and a decent newspaper?

Israel wants answers.

Reviewed on 17th May 2014

This is the first book in the Mobile Library series, in which Israel Armstrong moves to Northern Ireland to become a librarian, and finds his library closed and all the books missing. I picked up the book in a library sale because it sounded interesting from the cover.

I found it took some time to get into the book. The narrative is dialogue heavy throughout and I find this style quite hard to read - I suppose I'm more used to reading novels with heavy introspection and where action speaks louder than words, but eventually I got used to it.

The main character also takes some time to get into - he comes across quite whiny and dull for a lot of the book, and as we're aligned with him some of the events don't really seem to make any sense to the reader. However I also got used to this by the end of the story, and was slightly disappointed by how abruptly it ends and was hoping for a little more.

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