Murder at the Book Fair Read Free

mysteries. And each type of mystery has its own room.
Traditional mysteries occupied one large room, while classics, cozies,
thrillers, police procedurals, historical mysteries, and other types of
mysteries occupied other rooms in that large house converted into a bookstore. 
     
    October was rapidly making its way
through my life and was almost at an end, and on the day we visited the
bookstore the wind had picked up and was blowing leaves across the yard. I
hopped up onto the wooden porch and opened the door. There was Mrs. E. seated
behind the counter, as she usually was. She smiled when she saw us.
    "I figured it was about time
for you young boys to come and see me. I made sure that I had two copies of the
next book in each of the series you are reading."
    "We appreciate all the work
you do, Mrs. E., so we can just have fun reading."
    "And I appreciate your
business. By the way, do the two of you plan to go to the Kentucky Book Fair?
It's coming up in just over two weeks."
    "What's the Kentucky Book Fair. I've never heard of
it."
    "It's the biggest author
event in Kentucky . It's held in Frankfort each year, at the Convention
Center. They've been having it for over thirty years now. There will be around
two hundred authors there."
    "All mystery authors?"
    "No, a little of everything,
both fiction and nonfiction. And most of the authors are from Kentucky or write about Kentucky ."
    "I didn't realize there are
that many authors in Kentucky ."
    "More than that if you count
everyone who has a book. But for an author to be invited to the Kentucky Book
Fair he or she has to have a new book out."
    "So you think the chances
that we'd run into Agatha Christie there are remote?"
    "Pretty much so. She wasn't
there last year, either."
    "Do you really think it would
be something we'd be interested in? We only read mysteries, you know."
    "There are usually five to
ten mystery authors there, and some of them are quite good. More than likely
there won't be anyone there you have read, but David Baldacci and Sue Grafton
have been there, so there could be. Wait a minute! There might be a couple
there you've read. You've read Bill Noel and Laurien Berenson, haven't
you?"
    "Yeah. Will they be
there?"
    "Probably."
    "Then Lou and I might go.
It's only an hour and a half drive from here."
    We got the information from Mrs.
E., then looked over the books she had ordered for us. As usual she had stacked
the classic mysteries on top. I was familiar with the top book, even though I
hadn't read it. Everyone knows about Murder on the Orient Express by
Agatha Christie. Underneath it was The Case of the Stuttering Bishop ,
one of Erle Stanley Gardner's more acclaimed mysteries. And my favorite classic
mystery author is S.S. Van Dine, and Mrs. E. had included one of his, The
Garden Murder Case.
    Most of what I read are
contemporary mysteries, and she included several of those in my stack; All
Around the Town by Mary Higgins Clark, Mint Julep Murder by Carolyn
Hart, I Is For Innocent by Sue Grafton, The Sudoku Puzzle Murders by
Parnell Hall, The Street Lawyer by John Grisham, Stone Cold by
David Baldacci, One Shot by Lee Child, Hold Tight by Harlan
Coben, and The Accident by Linwood Barclay. There was also a short stack
of second books by authors I had read only once. I nodded that we would take
them, too. So we also left with Don't Tell a Soul and First Degree, two
different kinds of mysteries by David Rosenfelt, A Fatal Grace  by
Louise Penny, and The Killing Hour by Andrew Gross. True, none of them
had come out within the last year, but Lou and I didn't get started reading
until we were almost ready to retire, and most of these authors started writing
a long time before Lou and I started reading.
    All in all it was quite a haul.
Mrs. E. made enough from us that day to pay a year's worth of electricity for
the bookstore. And Lou and I didn't do too badly ourselves. I had contemplated
paying Mrs. E. in pennies, but I knew that I couldn't lift that