One day in 1990, I opened my morning Seattle Post-Intelligencer and read an article about a guy named Bill Farley, a newcomer from Philadelphia, who was in the process of opening the Seattle Mystery Bookshop at the corner of Second and Cherry in downtown Seattle.\u00a0 That very day, I bestirred myself from the house and drove into the city from Bellevue to meet the man in person.<\/p>\n
When I arrived, the sign on the door said closed, but the door opened at a touch.\u00a0 I\u2019m one of those people, if you give me an inch, I think I\u2019m a ruler.\u00a0 I pushed it open and let myself inside.<\/p>\n
As I recall there were two people in the shop at the time, Bill and his wife B. Jo.\u00a0 They were both surrounded by cardboard boxes which they were busily unpacking.\u00a0 They were totally preoccupied with shelving books. I\u2019m sure the last thing they needed right that minute was an uninvited visitor, but I introduced myself as a local mystery writer and was gratified to discover that Bill already knew my name.\u00a0 We chatted for a few moments, then, just as I was about to leave, another person ignored the closed sign and stepped inside the store.\u00a0 The new arrival was a would-be customer, and he told Bill he was looking for a book by someone named J.A. Jance.<\/p>\n
Happily, the book in question had already been shelved.\u00a0 While Bill fetched it, he pointed me out to the customer and introduced us.\u00a0 I was happy to sign it, of course, but then there was a problem.\u00a0 The cash register had yet to be hooked up.\u00a0 Bill and B. Jo had no change.\u00a0 I had kids in school back then.\u00a0 I was always able to find lunch money in the bottom of my purse, so I made change on the spot, thus selling and signing the first book ever sold by the Seattle Mystery Bookshop.\u00a0 Sadly, my signing for Proof of Life on September 7th was their last big signing.<\/p>\n
After that auspicious beginning, they followed me everywhere.\u00a0 They handled signings at the Doghouse; at a scary 12-step biker bar on 85th; and at the Women\u2019s University Club.\u00a0 Talk about diametrical opposites.\u00a0 At one point Bill Farley even set up a book table inside a massive fireplace at the Rainier Club.\u00a0 On those occasions when they couldn\u2019t actually staff an event, they sent me off with a cardboard dump loaded with back list titles; a box or two of the new hard back; and a cigar box loaded with change.\u00a0 (Last December, at a dinner celebrating Man Overboard hitting the NYTimes<\/em> list, J.P. Dickey, the proprietor of the shop since Bill\u2019s retirement in 1999, presented me with that very cigar box as a gift!)\u00a0 And every time a new book came out, I did an in-store signing for them.<\/p>\n B. Jo and Bill were full partners. When B. Jo died in 2007, I dedicated my next book to both of them. On December 21, 2013, I left a houseful of guests at my home to drive into Seattle to celebrate Bill\u2019s birthday.\u00a0 And when we lost him in 2015, I grieved along with everyone else who treasured the Seattle Mystery Bookshop.<\/p>\n Bill\u2019s long time cohort, J.B. Dickey, took over the shop when Bill retired in 1999.\u00a0 In the face of huge changes in the publishing world, keeping the stores doors open had been a long, difficult struggle.\u00a0 On September 30th, those doors will close for good.\u00a0 For years fans around from the world and around the country have ordered signed books and had them shipped from the Seattle Mystery Bookshop.\u00a0 I have no idea who will step into those shoes.\u00a0 More on that later.<\/p>\n I\u2019m so sorry to see all of them go\u2014J.B., Amber, and the rest.\u00a0 It makes my heart hurt to know that another longtime Seattle literary icon has bitten the dust.<\/p>\n So long, you guys.\u00a0 I wish you well. You did good work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One day in 1990, I opened my morning Seattle Post-Intelligencer and read an article about a guy named Bill Farley, a newcomer from Philadelphia, who was in the process of opening the Seattle Mystery Bookshop at the corner of Second and Cherry in downtown Seattle.\u00a0 That very day, I bestirred myself from the house and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[33,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-seattle"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-nz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1462,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions\/1462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}