In Which a Wee Bit of Great Britain Comes to My Neighborhood

To meet a handsome fellow from London who also owns a secondhand bookstore that carries mostly books by English authors or books about or published in Great Britain, for me is akin to meeting a rock star. 

My heart be still.

Paul Wheeldon, owner of the straightforwardly named Paul Wheeldon Secondhand Books, brought a bit of England into my life when he opened his shop in my neighborhood.

What a perfect place to have a bookish chat on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. 

I discovered that Paul is originally from Harlow New Town, Essex, which is about 25 miles northeast of London. He met his American wife, Sara, in London. She worked in a secondhand book store on Gloucester Road in a building that now houses Slightly Foxed new and used books. Both bibliophiles, they had a book business of their own going - selling online and to bookstores. 

They moved to Louisville five years ago. Paul first opened the store in a space he shared with an art gallery. He recently relocated to a spot just a half mile from me in a building he shares with a record store in the front and a vintage shop upstairs.

His shop at the back is very cozy and comfortable. His curated shelves hold books on military history, shipwrecks, global travel, high-end fashion, royalty, along with literary classics and contemporary British fiction. There are a shelf or two of antique and collectible volumes. The walls are hung with pieces of his own art and vintage maps. A black typewriter sits atop one bookcase. A bobby's hat rests atop another. Of special interest is an entire bookcase full of Penguins.

"I like to think I am a Penguin specialist," he says. "I always look for the orange stripe."

And it's not everywhere that one will find a book featuring Rowing Blazers and boxes full of Tatler and British Vogue magazines.

He only occasionally orders or sells online, he says, preferring to do business face to face.

What has been a great book find for you?
I was living in London and had gone to Norwich on a book buy. I picked up a prayer book and the inscription read: 

To Edith. 

Thinking of you. 

From, 

Edith Todhunter 

1915 

Kingsmoor House 

Kingsmoor House, a small country manor, was five minutes from my home in Essex. I have visited the house. This book now rests permanently on my nightstand.

A more recent find was a first edition copy of The History of Mr. Polly by H.G.Wells from 1910. Although not a particularly popular or valuable book, I knew right away that I had to have it in my personal collection.

What do you like to read?

Bad science fiction. I am particularly fond of the War Hammer series. There are lots and lots of them written by different authors. They are very predictable: the good guys face adversity, they get a beating, and then they come back and win. 

I especially like Sherlock Holmes. To me, Jeremy Brett was the best portrayer of the detective. The man lived it. I also like the Inspector Maigret series by Georges Simenon. The most recent one I read was At the Crossroads. I love that time period and I think they are sexy mysteries. I don't know how he does that.

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Oh, yes. I am destined to spend much time browsing and buying at Paul's bookshop. I am invited to come in anytime for a spot of tea. Aren't I lucky to have this little patch of literary Britain so close by! 

You can see more of Paul and his bookshop here.

Literary Crushes

Cornflower has invited us into her heart...she has a literary crush on Atticus Finch, Scout's father in To Kill a Mockingbird. Well, really, who doesn't? He is honest, thoughtful, kind, and wise. A terrific combination. And he loves to read.

I have crushes on so many characters. To name a few:

Inspector Maigret  
So clever and yet somewhat brooding. I would love to sit in a Parisian cafe, perhaps Cafe de Flore or maybe a more intimate one, and ask him about the many mysteries he has solved. And the delightful fragrance of his pipe...

Lord Peter Wimsey  
What can I say? I have a fondness for the aristocratic sleuth and his knack of solving mysteries for fun. I would love to tootle around London with him chasing down clues.

D'Artagnan  
One of the Three Musketeers. So romantic and full of life. Things would never be dull with this swordsman around. Plus, I could practice my French.

Jeeves and Bertie Wooster  
Ah, another aristocratic character and his faithful manservant. Everyone needs a good friend such as Bertie to keep one laughing and a good man such as Jeeves to serve one tea and scones...and get one out of sticky situations.

Who is on your list of fictional sweethearts?

Maigret on the Riviera

My dear Inspector Maigret has taken the train from Paris to the Antibes to investigate the stabbing death of one William Brown. Brown lived in a villa with two women - Gina and her maman - an unlikely threesome as Maigret soon discovers. Brown had the money and would go off on a drinking binge once a month. On his last escapade, he came home drunk with stab wounds in his back, He died. The women didn't know what to do, so they waited two days, buried the man in his own garden and tried to run away.

So Maigret has been called in to investigate discreetly because Brown, an Australian, had worked for French intelligence.

What I love is that in just a few words, Simenon can evoke such a sense of place.

On the villa's garden:

The air was heavy with the sweet smell of mimosa. Small orange trees still bore a few oranges. There were some queer-shaped flowers that Maigret had never seen before.

On Cannes, the city by the sea:

Everything here seemed white: hotels, shops, trousers and dresses, sails on the sea. It might have been a theatre set, a charming fairyland in blue and white.

Finally, on an out-of-the-way bar:

The empty bar below street level, the half-lit kitchen lower still; upstairs, a bedroom, probably in disorder; and the little window on the back yard, from which the sun had almost disappeared...

It was a strange world, and in the middle of it sat Maigret, finishing up the remains of a perfect salad.

Maigret and the Millionaires

The naked body of multimillion-aire Colonel Ward has been found in the bathtub of his suite at the ritzy Hotel George V. The next day, his lover, the Countess Paverini disappears from the hospital after trying to commit suicide.

Inspector Maigret doesn't like that he feels a little out of his element in Maigret and the Millionaires. The case will take him from the streets of Paris to the hotels and casinos of Monte Carlo to Lausanne, Switzerland and back to the elegant Paris hotel.

Maigret seeks answers in the back halls of the exclusive hotel. He spends a restless night of pacing and questioning and much sitting and thinking with pipe in hand before he determines the murderer and sets his trap to ensnare the guilty one.

This is a lovely mystery (if murder can be lovely) written in 1958 by Georges Simenon. It has been quite a while since Maigret and I crossed paths and I am glad to be back in his company on the streets of Paris. Or anywhere else for that matter.

Simenon writes of Maigret and Paris with such fondness. The mystery is solved in 170 pages and Maigret gets to go home to the apartment on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir that he shares with his wife, almost always referred to as Madame Maigret.

A satisfying ending to a well-written mystery.

Inspector Maigret Takes a Case

Georges Simenon
creator of Inspector Jules Maigret

I have now returned three mysteries unread to the library that take place in Paris. All three were duds. I have written my thoughts on the first two and will not waste any more time writing about the third.

I don't know what I was thinking. What I needed to do was to spend time with pipe-smoking Inspector Maigret of Paris. Classic! I stopped by a used book store hoping to find one or two of Georges Simenon's creations. Zéro.

So I headed to the main library and found two shelves full of Maigret mysteries. What to choose? After careful consideration I picked Maigret and the Millionaires and Maigret on the Riviera. In the first, Maigret solves a murder that happened at the luxurious Hotel George V. In the second, no surprise here, he is on a case on the Côte d'Azur.

I am sure I won't be disappointed.

On another note, I finished reading Paris Was Ours: Thirty-two writers reflect on the City of Light. Well, actually, I finished reading all the ones written by women of which there were 21. I will save the experiences of les hommes for another day.

Here are stories of women at all stages in life: single, divorced, married, mothers, students, young, mature, and émigrés all trying to find their way. Some had easier times than others. Some had connections when they arrived in Paris to ease their way with French customs; others had no one. The different views are what put the zing in these tales of Paris. No matter what memory or illusion one might have of how Paris is or could be, there is always someone who will come along to offer a totally different view.

Remember Hemingway's quote from yesterday?

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.

The stories from Paris Was Ours prove that to be true.