Seattlest went in to the Seattle Mystery Bookshop with a set of questions, and came out with a stack of novels recommended by founder Bill Farley and owner JB Dickey. (We're about halfway through reading the books.) Dickey can usually be found in the Pioneer Square store on weekdays, and Farley works weekends. But they were both present one recent Sunday afternoon when Seattlest stopped by to chat about being a specialty bookstore, great Seattle mysteries, and where to go for lunch.

Bill, you founded the Seattle Mystery Bookshop?

Bill: I did. And I had been functioning for a day or two when JB walked in as a customer and said, "You look like you need help." And he was right. He's been here ever since. About 1998 I put a gun to his head and said, "Buy it from me." He turned the gun back on me and said "Work weekends." So that's how we do it now. He works during the week, and I work for him during the weekends.

JB: I actually signed the papers so the sale was official in the beginning of '99, but we worked on it throughout '98.

Bill, you're not a Seattle native. Why come to Seattle and open a mystery bookshop?

Bill: Because Seattle is notoriously one of the best book cities, if not the best book city, in the country. I had thought that there was a mystery bookshop here. But I came out as a tourist and visited that alleged store, which was not really a full-fledged new and used bookshop. So I thought, a-ha, Seattle needs one, and I need a place to put one, so here we go.

Also, my wife said, "I'm moving to Seattle, how about you?"

JB, what brought you out here?

JB: I had been living out here since '84. It was time for me to get a part-time job, -- I was a painter at that time. I happened to walk down the street and see the signs that the Seattle Mystery Bookshop was open. So I came in and talked to Bill and started with him just one day a week to give him a chance to do paperwork and bookkeeping and so forth at home. Bit by bit it just crept up and absorbed me.

So you didn't see yourself as a mystery bookshop owner? It wasn't a life goal?

No. I was going to be a famous painter by now. It was just purely a part time job doing something I liked. But I did not ever project myself as being either a small business owner or a bookstore owner. Or specifically a mystery bookshop owner.

Now that you're here, how's business?

JB: Business is very good. Since the shop opened it's continually gotten better and better. As you probably remember, back when the big chain stores were really coming on, so many small bookshops couldn't make a go of it, but we have always had business improving, whether it's been a lot or a little. We've stayed healthy through it all.

I think there are two reasons: one, we've always had used books, so we've always had a greater depth of selection than our competitors. Also quite frankly we know a hell of a lot more than they do. To work in a store like this, you have to know and love the books. Whereas people are always talking about clerks in the general stores who don't know the books. So those two things have always stood in well for us.

Bill: I think in order to succeed these days as a small shop, you have to specialize. My wife and I had a general bookshop some years ago, and we found that there were just too many subjects. We found that we couldn't possibly be knowledgeable in all those fields. People who try a small general bookshop have my sympathy and support, but I don't think you can do that on a small basis. There are too many things to know. So you have to say, okay, what do I know? And go with that. Write what you know is a famous saying; sell what you know is an equally good rule.

Who do you consider your main competition -- Elliott Bay, Amazon, Barnes & Noble? How much time do you spend actively competing with them, rather than doing what you do well?

JB: Any and all of them are competitors, even down to membership stores like Sam's and Costco. Any place that sells books is a place where our customers can buy books other than here.

We don't focus our energy on competing as much as doing what we do well, if not better, so that people know about us more, or know more about what we have. For instance, with our upcoming author events, letting people know as far in advance so we can lock in orders. That helps us lock in sales and know how many to have on hand for the author event itself.

So it's not really with the focus of competing, as much as "how can we do what we do better?" It's a slightly different mindset. There isn't a way we can compete one on one with a Barnes & Noble or an Amazon, huge conglomerates that have huge pull with publishers, that get special terms, better discounts, extra pay for product placement. There's no way for a small store to compete like that. The only way to compete is to do what we do better and to attract the kind of people who are attracted to that effort.

Why did you decide to open the shop downtown, rather than another neighborhood?

Bill: Ironically, because I didn't want to work weekends. [JB laughs] A neighborhood location would have been evening and weekend intensive. And I didn't want that, since my wife worked five days a week, I wanted to work five days a week so we could have time off together. I also felt that tourist business would be very important, and you can't get tourists in the neighborhoods.

Tourist business is very important to a store like this. We have to capture people here when they're here as tourists, then when they go home to a small town far from a bookstore, they get books from us and we ship to them. We have a big mailing list and do a lot of mail order and phone order business. We couldn't survive without that.

Also I wanted to locate the shop near the law enforcement area. Because law enforcement people -- attorneys, police, paralegal workers…

JB: Jurors.

Bill: Jurors, yes, are all great mystery readers. So I was pleased to find a spot in downtown Seattle where the tourists would find us and yet right in the heart of the legal district. It just seemed a natural.

Is there a typical Seattle Mystery Bookshop customer?

JB: The easiest way to narrow it down is a split between people we see during the week – largely office workers, some shoppers – we see them on weekdays on their lunch hour or before they go to the ferry or bus. Then we have the people we see on weekends, who don't work downtown, who never come downtown during the week. We don't see the weekday people on the weekend, or the weekend people during the workday.

As Bill was saying, with mail order, we do a big business with reserved books. People call up for the next few signings we're going to have and say save me a copy of this, this and this, and I'll pick it up the next time I come in.

Past that, it's everybody. Everybody comes in.

What, to you, is a mystery book? You sell a range of titles from the Lemony Snicket series to true crime. I can see where they all fit in, but do you have a rule of thumb?

JB: For the most part, a mystery or a crime or a thriller or a suspense – there has to be a resolution to the problem at the end. So it could be someone is in danger, sort of a Hitchcockian suspense. Well, there's a resolution to the end, the bad guy is caught and Jimmy Stewart is saved from falling out the window. He's not a professional investigator, but still there's crime involved.

It could be a true whodunit, more of an Agatha Christie puzzler with red herrings and suspects and someone puts justice at the end and gets everything right.

Or it could be an actual crime novel where you know who bad guys are, but you don't know how they're going to get their comeuppance. So there's a variety of things. You could even look at espionage as being a crime: someone's a spy and someone's out to stop 'em.

So for the most part, it's a story of trouble, and a resolution to that trouble at the end. Ideally.

Are there particular subgenres that do well in Seattle? What are Seattleites favorite mystery books, or is it pretty much all over the map?

JB: I'd say it's pretty much all over the map. Certainly – I think this would be true in any locale – what sells the most are the books set in that locale. So obviously, we do very well with local authors and books set locally, both with local readers and visitors. That's a big thing – tourists come to town and want to read a mystery set where they are. And if they get hooked, and they can't find the author back home, then that's when they'll call us and have us ship them stuff.

We as a shop have never done well with medical thrillers, compared to other types. I don't know why, that's just the way it is. We do okay with espionage – not as much as I'm sure other shops do.

Past that, it sort of fluctuates. There was a time when everyone was buying historical mysteries, and that has slacked off a little bit. I think the animal, dog and cat mysteries have died down a little bit.

These days – and it's our supposition since 9/11 -- there's been an upsurge in the traditional type of puzzle mystery, which tends to be not very violent, not very bloody…

Bill: And very strong on resolution at the end, which, you know, life doesn't have any more. I think that's a big part of why people like mysteries now, because the bad guy or bad girl gets comeuppance, which doesn't happen in real life very much.

Who are the great Seattle mystery authors?

[Laughter.] Bill: They're all good! Every single one of them!

Let's wander out of the minefield – who are the authors the average Seattleite hasn't heard of, but should have? Beyond Earl Emerson, Ann Rule, J.A. Jance, and K.K. Beck?

JB: There are those authors who have been writing for a long time, but their books may not be as available as others. Because there's always the cycle who's in print and who's out of print in the publishing world.

One of the longtime authors who is of the same longevity as Jance and Emerson is Aaron Elkins. Who is an Edgar winner, and has a globetrotting physical anthropologist sleuth. They're very educational, they're very fun, they're almost travelogues of the different places. He had gone through a period of 7 or 8 years where his books had started to go out of print. Now he's with a new publisher and they're starting to come back. He's not a new author, but he's now more available and people who may not have known him in the past are rediscovering him. It's just part of that cycle.

Bill: A few come to my mind who aren't nearly as well known as they should be. The first is Martin Limon, who lives here. His books are set in Korea. They have nothing to do with the northwest, but they're wonderful books.

Of the ones set in Seattle, the ones who come to mind as being under-known… – Lowen Clausen has a trilogy about Seattle cops. He used to be one. Curt Colbert has 3 books set back in 1940s Seattle, which as far as I can tell capture the feeling of Seattle of that time very well. One has a wonderful scene in the women's room at Frederick & Nelson.

JB: Now that's history!

Bill: Now that's local! And a new writer Clyde Ford, who lives in Bellingham, but nobody's perfect, has a couple of new books set in this area and a new one set in New York that are very good. Who am I missing?

JB: One author who is a shop favorite, not as well known as we think he ought to be, is a guy named Robert Ferrigno, who lives over on the East Side. Wonderful writer. More of a crime or thriller writer. Up to now, none of his books have been set in the northwest. That's about to change with his new book that's coming out. So he's someone that will probably seem new to a lot of readers, even though he's been writing for a long time and we've been hand-selling his books.

Do you have a favorite mystery set here?

JB: I was always a big fan of a set of books by Fred Huebner, who is a local attorney, and his character was also an attorney, though the book s function more like private eye novels. Those were back in the early '90s, and I thought they were just terrific. He did I think five, and they're now all out of print. He was wonderful.

Then there was a guy who at one point lived here -- Steve Greenleaf, who has a San Francisco private eye, John Marshall Tanner. One of his books was set in Seattle. Very much in the Ross MacDonald school of thoughtful private eye writing. He has now quit writing.

It's harder to say favorites with current writers, for fear of stepping on toes.

I don't want to get you into any trouble.

Bill: I will risk giving recognition to the one of our customers I can think of who became a successful mystery writer. G.M. Ford used to come in here and say "I could write better books than a lot of these," and we said "Sure, Jerry. We bet you can." And one day he came in and said, "My book's going to be published." And we thought, hoo boy, what are we going to do if it's terrible? Well, it was not terrible, it was wonderful, called Who in Hell Is Wanda Fuca? It became the first of a very successful career for him. We feel a little like we invented him.

JB: [laugher] Oh, God, I hope Jerry doesn't read that.

[laughter]

The other person who isn't quite Seattle, Dana Stabenow of Alaska, had a couple of science fiction novels published. Then her first mystery, A Cold Day for Murder, was nominated for an Edgar Award. She had her first signing here, and we told her she'd win. And she did. We feel like we made that happen, too. Of course we didn't, but we feel like we did.

Do you have a favorite historical Seattle true crime story?

JB: Yes, and this is not something I can really explain in full. Probably ten years ago, someone told us of a story of a famous case where in the 1890s or early 1900s, down across First Avenue where the big parking garage is, there used to be a bank or a storage vault place. Not a you-store-it, but a place where wealthy people stashed their valuables. Over the course of a holiday weekend, some people tunneled into it and took as much as they could carry. The crime was not found out until following Monday. They were never caught, they never knew exactly who did it, and I've never been able to find a trace of what this robbery was. One of the tour guides at the Underground is a good customer of ours. He's their unofficial historian and he's never been able to find out anything about it. Somebody told me about this great theft down across First Avenue. Maybe someday I'll find out more about it -- I don't think it was a complete fabrication.

Bill: When I was first here in Seattle, looking for a place to open the shop, I went to the library and found a wonderful old book about Seattle crimes. One that caught my attention was a murder that took place right down here at the corner of First and Cherry. A guy from Portland came up following a guy who had run off with his sister. He came up to revenge his sister's honor and shot the guy on the street corner out here. I haven't been able to find the book again, and I ridiculously didn't copy the story out of the book. But I thought, "Oh, I like this neighborhood."

Where do you go for lunch?

JB. Across the street to Bakeman's.

Bill: Hands down, Bakeman's.

JB: Great food, great price. Great atmosphere.

Bill: Bakeman's is the reason we're here. When I was looking for a place to open the shop, hopefully in this general area, I thought I had hunted the neighborhood carefully, and I couldn't find anything. I saw a thing in the paper about lunch in downtown Seattle that talked about the Georgian Room in the Four Seasons Hotel, and Bakeman's, as kind of two extremes. Bakeman's sounded good to me. They talked about their meatloaf sandwich, and that people stand in line out to the street for that meatloaf sandwich. So I came and stood in line, and I looked across the street and found a little sign that said space available. So right after lunch I came over and the rest is history. So it's Bakeman's fault that we're here.

And it's a great meatloaf sandwich!

What are your favorite spots in Seattle when you're not working?

JB: When we have visitors in town, we always like to take them out to Shilshole, usually to Ray's, for the view. Or we take them down to the market and pick up stuff for a picnic lunch.

I'm a big believer, being a small businessman, in supporting small businesses. I live up in the Roosevelt district and we like to walk to where we're going for food or entertainment if possible. So we walk down to places around Green Lake or into the Roosevelt District.

Bill: Downtown, we like Place Pigalle and Le Pichet and Campagne. We like the French edge. Our favorite lunch place outside of downtown is Daly's Drive-In on Eastlake. They have a fantastic salmon burger and wonderful fries. They've won "best of Seattle" for their onion rings occasionally, and they are to die from if not to die for. But worth it.

What are the mystery titles that even a well-read non-mystery-fan should have read?

JB: That's a tricky thing because a lot of the real classic mysteries, the foundation mysteries, have been made into movies. So you could have seen the movie and used it like Cliff's Notes. Certainly things like The Maltese Falcon and Murder on the Orient Express. The Big Sleep.

It's almost as if there are certain authors you should have read rather than certain mysteries. Occasionally people come in and ask "What are the best mysteries ever written?" And man, that's a tough thing to do, because so much of it is a matter of taste. There are people who come in who have terrible jobs, dealing with social services, and they just want something to take them away from their job. And then there are people who have average jobs who want something a little bit more daring and interesting.

There was just an article in the paper about James Bond movies and books, and it's amazing to me how many people have never read a James Bond book. They're wonderful, but they're not at all like what people think of when they think of James Bond stories.

Around here, we're very big on Rex Stout and the Nero Wolfe books.

Bill: Those are the greatest mysteries ever written.

JB: The thing about mysteries that is so wonderful is that they're so varied. People will come in and ask for art mysteries. Or people who are going on vacation and want a mystery set where they're going, so they have something either to read while they're there or to get a sense of the place before they go. There are people who get hooked on mysteries set in Italy.

By and large, there are so many mysteries of all different kinds that it's pretty difficult to exhaust whatever it is that you want to explore. So to talk about what we think are the best mysteries ever, or ones that everyone should have read, that's just going to be the opinion of two cranky old guys.

Who run a mystery bookstore.

Bill: Cranky but knowledgeable. Opinionated!

Does the corollary about people with difficult jobs liking lighter books, and those with nicer jobs liking harder books, hold true? Or was it an off the cuff statement?

JB: It's a very broad statement, but yeah, I think it's basically true. Just like overall, I have found that the majority of readers of true crime are women, whereas men don't really read true crime. Is that true all over the place, or just us? I don't know.

Some people used to say that men buy more hardcovers and women are more paperback buyers. I don't know that that's true. It probably depends on the author.

But by and large, people choose types of mysteries or authors to escape from their everyday world, either into something more calm and entertaining or something more exciting and challenging. We have people, for the most part women, who buy all the different kinds of needlepoint or culinary books. We have guys who buy all baseball books or sports mysteries from us. The wonderful thing about mysteries is there's something for everybody. In the years that we've been here, there have been very few times we've been stumped – not to toot our own horn – over trying to find a certain type or setting for a mystery. It's a very flexible form.

Bill: I'm reminded of the time somebody wanted every book we had that had an illustration of any kind of luggage on the cover. You'd think that with books like "The Case of the…" that we would have a lot, but we couldn't find that many. We found some, but it was really fun looking around for luggage covers.

What do you read when you're not reading mysteries?

Bill: Generally non-fiction. History, especially about New York City.

JB: Same as Bill. History or biography, which are often the same thing. Or books about Kansas City jazz.

JB, I know you're a JFK assassination buff. Do you believe Oswald acted alone, or do you subscribe to one of the more popular alternate theories, or one of your own?

JB: Not only do I believe he was not acting alone, I don't even believe he was one of the shooters. [laughter]

Do you want to elaborate?

I'm reading a book that's a reexamination of Jim Garrison's case – the only guy to have brought charges against someone for the Kennedy assassination. He was largely derided and massacred in the press, and his guy, Clay Shaw, was found not guilty. No one was convicted. This book reexamines his case in light of everything that's been declassified since Garrison's death. It's quite illuminating, because all of his charges of these people in New Orleans and Dallas being government agents were pooh-poohed at the time, but now everything he claimed is coming true.

I still maintain it's the most interesting mystery ever because it's got everything. Forensics, courtroom drama, espionage, every aspect of what people like in a mystery. Red herrings, and multiple suspects, and the military. So I think it's the most interesting case because it's got every aspect of mysteries in one case.

I don't know that there is an answer or resolution, as we were talking about, that that's why people like mysteries.

Gerald Posner did not close the case for you?

JB: [Bronx cheer]

Seattle Mystery Bookshop
117 Cherry Street
(206) 587-5737
staff@seattlemystery.com