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Автор John Dunning

Also by John Dunning

FICTION

The Holland Suggestions

Looking for Ginger North

Denver

Deadline

Booked to Die

The Bookman’s Wake

Two O’Clock, Eastern Wartime

NONFICTION

Tune in Yesterday

On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio

THE

BOOKMAN’S WAKE

JOHN DUNNING

POCKET STAR BOOKS

New York London Toronto Sydney

The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed. ” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book. ”

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

PA Pocket Star Book, published by POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-56782-9

First Pocket Books printing March 1996

10 9 8

POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Cover design by Jae Song

Manufactured in the United States of America

To Jack Kisling of Hairline Press, who navigates

with a steady hand the eddies and shoals

of the printshop.

Again, prices on actual books discussed by characters in the story may be a year or two out-of-date.

In a time of madness, when a new novel can bring ten times its cover price a year after publication, prices become obsolete almost as they’re published. Janeway remains a cynic when people pay too much too soon and glorify the trendy. But he is an equal-opportunity cynic who saves his deepest skepticism for me, when he and I are alone at four-thirty in the morning.

Another tip of the hat to Warwick Downing, who bullied me for three years. To George Fowler for turning me left and right in the Seattle rain. To Pat McGuire for long friendship and a kick in the duff when I needed it. And a kind word for the small-press publishers of today. Some still struggle valiantly in the great lost cause.

THE

BOOKMAN’S WAKE