Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is the first novel by American bookseller, teacher and author, Matthew Sullivan. Midnight is closing time at the Bright Ideas Bookstore in Lower Downtown Denver, and Lydia Smith is rounding up the stragglers. She knows one of their regulars, Joey is upstairs, but when she reaches the top floor, having heard books thumping onto the floor, she finds him hanging by the neck from a ceiling beam. Poking out of his jeans pocket is a photograph of Lydia with her best friends on her tenth birthday, and Joey's fingertips are all cuts covered in tape.

Joey's suicide upsets the hard-won equilibrium of Lydia's life. She is horrified to realise she appears in a newspaper photograph of the scene; people from a past she has tried to forget begin to make contact, unwelcome contact. Joey left no suicide note but he has, it seems from a Post-it note retrieved from his landlady's bra, chosen Lydia as the recipient of his worldly goods. Which include a black wool suit, pressed white shirt and red tie, a metal trash can holding the charred remains of Joey's papers, and a crate of strangely mutilated books. Is there a message in there for Lydia? If so, why her? And how did Joey come by the photo of her?

Sullivan gives the reader a story told over two time periods: present day and twenty years earlier. Much of it is told from Lydia's perspective, but her father, Tomas carries part of the narrative. It's a cleverly constructed story. There's a twenty-year-old cold case in there, an unsolved and violent triple murder and, while a very astute reader may deduce the identity and motive of The Hammerman early on, for most readers the who and why will come clear only in the last eighty pages.

Sullivan populates his novel with quirky characters: bookstore customers and staff, friends, lovers, family, they are appealing for all their flaws and foibles. The bookstore and the library are almost characters in themselves, and the titles in Joey's crate of books are diverse and definitely a bit eccentric. This is a tale with action and excitement, with humour and heartache, with a bit of lust and a lot of love. It is a brilliant debut novel and it will be interesting to see what this talented author does next.