Mr. Dixon Disappears: A Mobile Library Mystery

by: Ian Sansom

Published by: Harper

Review by Librarian Kathy Perschmann

Sansom, who lives in Northern Ireland, is a writer and reviewer for the Guardian and the London Review of Books. He is the author of The Impartial Recorder (published in England as the Ring Road), and The Case of the Missing Books, the first in the Mobile Library mysteries.

Poor Israel Armstrong arrives early at the Dixon and Pickering store on Easter Saturday and is let in by security guard to set up his exhibit on the history of the store. In inimitable Armstrong style, he of course sets up the display and then backs into a glass display case that crashes into another… you get the picture.

The caretaker shows up pale and shocked, and stammers out that they’ve been robbed–and Mr. Dixon is missing. Once the police arrive they decide that since Israel is there, and his fingerprints are all over everything, he must be guilty. He is interrogated and arrested. He is a wreck of nerves when he is finally bailed out; and he realizes he must find out what happened. The police certainly won’t.

He has to rely on his old pal Ted and his cab service, unfortunately, as he has been put on suspension and has no access to the library van. Ted and Israel stumble around, and during their investigation they trip across clues that lead them to a solution–of sorts. It seems Mr. Dixon was a member of a local magician’s society. How did he make himself and 100,000 pounds in cash disappear? His wife and daughter appear only slightly worried. His son, a shock-jock talk show host on Belfast morning radio, is estranged from his father but inadvertently provides a clue.

Sansom has created a zany tale of a careening search through Ireland featuring the somewhat hapless librarian Israel, struggling to survive in an alien land.

Armchair Interviews says: A mystery with lots of interesting characters.

Author’s Web site: http://www.IanSansom.net