My protagonist in the upcoming 42nd Street Library mystery, Murder Off the Page, Raymond Ambler, is the curator of a fictional crime fiction collection at the New York Public Library’s flagship 42nd Street Library. The 42nd Street Library is a research library housing a number of world-class special collections. I created the (fictional) crime fiction collection and made it part of the library’s Manuscript and Archives so Ambler could have an occupation befitting a crime solver.
You might ask why choose a librarian as a crime solver. For me, it wasn’t much of a question. For one thing, I’m a great admirer of libraries and what they do in the community. Libraries are a unique institution in the greed-driven society we’re living in. Could you imagine in today’s United States someone proposing setting up institutions in every city, town, and village of the nation that would provide access to books, records, movies, computers, and advice on how to use and get the most from all of those things—and all of it for free? Yet the United States more-or-less invented the concept of free libraries, and one of our most famous robber barons, Andrew Carnegie, provided the funding to build a couple of thousand of them.
Librarians are the curators of our collective knowledge and, as important, our culture. Librarians, probably more than any other profession, with the possible exception of writers and other artists, are the fiercest protectors of free speech in our society. So for my character Raymond Ambler, I like that he has this pedigree as a seeker of truth and a fighter for freedom of speech.
For another thing, libraries are full of information—back copies of newspapers, magazines, and journals, maps, photographs, access to gazoodles of data bases, not to mention the kinds of special collections my decretive Raymond Ambler works in, and so on. In fact, in thinking about this, I remembered that in my first book in my first series—Beware the Solitary Drinker—published in 2002 and written some time before that, my unlikely hero, bartender Brian McNulty, in furtherance of his investigation, visits the library. Here’s McNulty on page 117, “In the morning, I went to the 42nd Street Library on the off chance the newspaper clipping Betsy found was about Reuben himself. … I went to look through the back issues of the Journal-American. …” A few pages later on page 123, after a trip to Brooklyn, he moves on to the New York Times and finds what he’s looking for, a news photo of a man in police custody. Fifteen or so years before I came up with the idea of the 42nd Street Library as the setting for a mystery novel and librarian Raymond Ambler as the detective, I’d already seen the library as a tool for my detective.
In Murder Off the Page, as in the two previous books in the series Murder at the 42nd Street Library and Murder in the Manuscript Room, the crime fiction collection plays a significant role in either creating or solving the mystery, so I went to some pains to try to make the collection and Ambler’s role as its curator authentic. While I thought I did a pretty good job at creating a believable setting and character, I wasn’t really sure. And then I met Randal Brandt.
Randal is the Head of Cataloging for the Bancroft Library, the primary special collections library at the University of California Berkeley but more importantly for our purposes he is also the curator of the Bancroft Library’s California De
tective Fiction Collection. That’s right, he’s a real live curator of a crime fiction collection.
Is there really a crime fiction collection at the Bancroft Library?
Yes, there is. It is called the California Detective Fiction Collection and it is made up, primarily, of examples of crime, mystery, and detective fiction set in California and/or written by California authors. I’m trying to make the collection as inclusive as possible, from thrillers to cozies, from best-sellers to self-published, and from hardcovers to paperback originals. Although I don’t have an exact count of the number of books in the collection, it currently stands at over 4,200 volumes. I’m also interested collecting authors’ archives and, while there have been a few successes in that area so far, it’s definitely an area that I want to put more emphasis on.
How did there come to be such a collection at a prestigious academic library?
The Bancroft Library has always collected the literature of California, occasionally including crime fiction. In 1998, the library acquired over 200 mystery novels set in San Francisco that had been collected by Don Herron (Herron is best known for his landmark biography of Charles Willeford and as the longtime leader of the popular Dashiell Hammett Tour in San Francisco).
When I began working at Bancroft in 2001, I brought with me an interest in San Francisco Bay Area crime fiction and would make periodic recommendations for additions to the collection. So, in 2013, when our curator of Western Americana decided that we should be more systematic in collecting genre fiction, she asked me if I’d be interested in serving as the curator of a detective fiction collection. She asked me this question during an elevator ride; by the time the doors opened on our floor I had said “yes”!
When did your interest in mysteries and libraries begin?
I can trace my interest in reading mysteries back to my mother. She was a fan of Agatha Christie novels and would check them out of our public library. At some point, she started passing them along to me and I fell in love with them, too, particularly the Hercule Poirot novels. When I got a little older, I moved on to Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.
After graduating from college with an English degree and no desire to become a teacher, I took a job at the public library where I discovered that librarianship was going to be my career path, and got a little bit of exposure to cataloging—enough to figure out that that was the area I wanted to specialize in.
When I got married, my wife and I went on our honeymoon to New Orleans. We started reading books about Louisiana and I discovered the Robicheaux novels of James Lee Burke. I’ve been passionately reading mysteries ever since.
What are some of the highlights of the Bancroft crime fiction collection?
Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald—all of whom hail from California—have been called the “holy trinity” of the hard-boiled detective novel, and I’m very pleased that our collection has significant examples of works by all three of them. Several years ago, we acquired a copy of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Although it lacks the original dust jacket, it is still a fine copy of this seminal San Francisco novel. A significant recent donation included first editions of Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely and The Little Sister. And, in 2016, we received a donation of a nearly-complete set of first editions by Macdonald (lacking only his first two books). The collection also includes over 700 volumes of the works of Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, including books they wrote (separately and in collaboration), edited, and contributed to, both in English and in foreign language translations.
I’m also actively seeking archival collections of authors. Although this aspect of the collection is still in its infancy, it does include a large archive of the papers of David Dodge (who was born in Berkeley, lived in San Francisco—and used the city as the setting of his first series of four novels about tax consultant/amateur detective James “Whit” Whitney—and later wrote the novel To Catch a Thief, which was used as the basis of Alfred Hitchcock’s film starring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant). We also have a smaller archive of the papers of Rebecca Rothenberg, who was the author of the critically-acclaimed Claire Sharples Botanical Mystery series set in the California’s Central Valley.
What does the future look like for the collection?
I just hope that the collection continues to grow. I’m planning to keep on acquiring books by contemporary writers, and filling in significant writers of the past as the opportunities arise. I’m also hoping to bring in more writers’ archives, and the best way to do that is to publicize the collection and let writers and the mystery community know about it.
In 2018, the California Detective Fiction Collection received a major financial commitment from UC Berkeley alum and mystery writer William C. Gordon. Willie—as he was affectionately known—had a long career as a pro-bono personal injury lawyer, largely representing immigrants and members of the Latino community, After retiring, he began to write mysteries, penning six novels set in 1960s San Francisco featuring newspaper reporter/detective Samuel Hamilton.
He also turned to philanthropy. In addition to endowing libraries at his high school and middle school, Willie has cemented his legacy at UC Berkeley with a gift to the Bancroft Library earmarked for the acquisition, cataloging, and processing of California detective fiction. Unfortunately, Willie did not live to see his gift being put into action. He passed away in March 2019, but his generosity and enthusiasm for the collection will live on.
You’re actively involved in the Mystery Writers of America, especially the Northern California Chapter. Is this in line with your work as a curator? Are mystery writers supportive of the crime fiction collection? Does this help with the development of the collection?
Yes, to all of the above! I’m currently in my second year on the board of the MWA NorCal Chapter. My responsibilities include acting as a liaison to local libraries, identifying and securing library partners in MWA NorCal programming (we recently completed a week-long series of programs held in public libraries throughout the NorCal region called “Mystery Week” that I helped arrange) and assisting in the development of mystery and thriller programming at the annual Bay Area Book Festival held in Berkeley.
These activities benefit my curatorial work by putting me in direct contact with mystery writers. One of the collecting focuses that I’ve had from the beginning is the works of MWA NorCal members. The chapter was founded in 1947 as the first regional MWA chapter and I’ve collected books by many of the early members, which includes names you may have heard of (Anthony Boucher, Lenore Glen Offord, Virginia Rath) and many you probably have not (Mary Collins, Darwin and Hildegarde Teilhet, Cary Lucas, Eunice Mays Boyd). I see collecting the works of current and past NorCal members to be one of the long-term ongoing goals of the collection.
Now we get to the hard part. I’m honored and humbled—and might be more humble after you answer these questions—that you’re familiar with my fictional hero Raymond Ambler and his adventures solving crimes from his perch as curator of the 42nd Street Library’s (fictional) crime fiction collection.
Does the Bancroft Library have any similarities to the 42nd Street Library where the fictional Raymond Ambler works?
Both libraries are research libraries, which means that materials are collected and preserved for their long-term research value. They are both non-circulating libraries, so material must be consulted onsite, and may not be taken out of the library. The Bancroft Library is one of the largest and most heavily used libraries of manuscripts, rare books, and unique materials in the United States, supporting major research and instructional activities and playing a leading role in the development of the University’s research collections. The 42nd Street Library is the flagship branch of the New York Public Library with world-renowned collections in American and British literate and other areas. Both are open to the public and the materials are available to anyone who has the need to see them. One big difference is that the 42nd Street Library, located as it is in the heart of Manhattan, is much more of a tourist attraction.
Does the work that Ambler does as a curator strike you as having any resemblance to the work a curator does in the real world?
From a librarian’s point of view (or, at least, this librarian’s point of view), Raymond Ambler is a wholly believable character. I remember—when I was reading Murder in the Manuscript Room—thinking that the book was written by someone who really knew what he was talking about when describing some of the curatorial and archival duties of research librarians. And, those details were woven seamlessly into the narrative, never interfering with the plot or character development. I’ve visited the 42nd Street Library myself, and the descriptions of the library are accurate. I’m just really jealous that Ambler has a whole reading room devoted to his crime fiction collection; that’s another big difference between this fictional collection and mine.
Raymond Ambler has a penchant for getting involved in homicide cases and solving murders. You, of course, have never done anything like that … have you?
Actually, I have investigated a murder that happened in the UC Berkeley Library. There was no mystery about “whodunit,” but many details of the crime, especially the exact location, were murky. It started with an email I received one day asking me if I knew anything about “the murder that happened in the Bancroft Library?” Wait! What? Murder in the Bancroft Library? No, that part wasn’t right. But, a murder did take place in the summer of 1960 in the Doe Library (the main University Library on campus), and I determined to get to the bottom of this story once and for all. I began my search in the Bancroft Library’s San Francisco Examiner Photograph Archive, which contained some dated crime scene photographs, which led me to contemporary newspaper accounts of the crime and subsequent trial. But, all of the Library’s public spaces have been renamed, remodeled, and reconfigured over the years, so I had to locate more photographs of the library for comparison. I know for sure that the murder took place in what is now called the Roger W. Heyns Reading Room, and I’m about 99% positive that I’ve pinpointed the exact spot.
Do you have any parting advice for Raymond Ambler?
Be careful if you find a gun in someone’s archive…
