The Paperback Sleuth - Death in Fine Condition by Andrew Cartmel
Cordelia knows books. An addict-turned-dealer of classic paperbacks, when she’s not spending her days combing the charity shops and jumble sales of suburban London for valuable collector’s items, she’s pining for the woman of her dreams and nimbly avoiding her landlord’s demands for rent.
The most elusive prize of all, her white whale, has surfaced — a set of magnificent, vintage Sleuth Hound crime novels. Gorgeous, and as rare as they come. Just one problem. They’re not for sale. Still, that won’t stop a resourceful woman like Cordelia… One burglary later, the books are hers.
Unfortunately, the man she’s just robbed turns out be one of London’s most dangerous gangsters, and now he’s on her trail and out for blood.
Cordelia’s best laid plans to pay the rent and woo the object of her affections start to fall apart, and she realises she may have placed herself in the crosshairs of a villain torn straight from the pages of her treasured novels.
Andrew Cartmel was born in London, and lives in Roehampton. He grew up in Canada and returned to the UK to complete his education, such as it is (Andrew attended Queen Mary University and did postgraduate studies at the University of Kent in Canterbury).
A lifelong desire to become a professional writer initially earned Andrew some television script commissions and resulted in him being hired as the script editor on Doctor Who, in the days when that role at the BBC was virtually the same as a show runner.
He served for three seasons on Doctor Who, a highly influential run which has become memorialised as the ‘Cartmel Masterplan’, before moving on to script edit a season of Casualty and then writing for and script editing Dark Knight at Channel Five.
Other television commissions include scripts for Torchwood and Midsomer Murders.
He has written novels, toured as a stand-up comedian, written plays for the stage which have been performed in London (End of the Night, Under the Eagle, and his new comedy Screwball) and also written a number of graphic novels.
Andrew writes extensively about jazz for the website London Jazz News.
He is currently collaborating with Ben Aaronovitch on the highly successful Rivers of London comic franchise.
But his primary focus is his series of crime novels about the Vinyl Detective, a jazz-loving record collector turned sleuth; and the Paperback Sleuth series. (Warning: may contain cats.)
