Denver homicide cop-turned-rare-book dealer Cliff Janeway is swept into a new book mystery when he travels to Boston to buy a Richard Burton signed first edition at auction. The book is a true classic, telling of Burton's journey (disguised as a Muslim) to the forbidden holy cities of Mecca and Medina. But soon the book's provenance is cast into doubt, and Janeway must take a journey of his own to uncover secrets that have remained hidden for more than 130 years.
The trouble begins when an elderly woman, Josephine Gallant, arrives in Janeway's Denver bookstore claiming to be the rightful owner of the book Janeway has just bought, but of a fabulous lost library of Burton material. The library includes Burton's handwritten journal, allegedly detailing an undercover trip deep into the fiery American South in 1860. What did Burton do on that secret trip? What secrets are revealed in the journal? When Mrs. Gallant falls gravely ill, Janeway makes her a deathbed promise - he will find those missing books.
Janeways always keeps his promises, but he soon has an even more compelling reason to penetrate the Burton enigma when a friend is murdered, possibly because of a Burton book. Finding her killer seems impossible - all the people who know about the Burton books and what happened to them have been dead for more than 80 years. The quest leads him east, to Baltimore and then to Charleston, South Carolina. Along the way he encounters a Pulitzer Prize-winning author with a very stuffed shirt, a pair of unorthodox booksellers, and a brutal gangster. Also in danger are his traveling companions, an ex-librarian named Koko Bujak and a young lawyer, Erin D'Angelo, who have reasons of their own for wanting the Burton journal found. Janeway wants to trust them, but can he?
With it's rich combination of booklore and history, 'The Bookman's Promise' is a brilliant addition to one of the most acclaimed series in crime fiction.
