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Neighborhood Joint

At Mysterious Bookshop in TriBeCa, a Hunt for Clues and Diversions

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CreditCreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

“Nobody shoplifts from a store that knows 3,214 ways to murder someone,” a sign at the Mysterious Bookshop in TriBeCa warns. But if the country’s oldest independent purveyor of mystery literature gets the ax, its owner will know why: money.

“We lost, you wouldn’t be wrong to say, six figures a year, for seven or eight years,” said Otto Penzler, 74, the store’s tireless proprietor. Supporting the store has led Mr. Penzler to a life of crime himself, with stints writing about mysteries, editing an Edgar Award-winning anthology of them and even publishing them (he started Mysterious Press in 1975).

In 2005, when the store moved from its original location on West 56th Street, where it opened in 1979 — on a Friday the 13th, no less — to its current home on Warren Street, near the Sept. 11 museum and memorial, hordes of loyal customers followed. “Detective stories are essentially fairy tales,” Mr. Penzler said of the genre’s staying power. “They’re the battle between good and evil.”

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CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

In an era of e-books and online ordering, the store moves ink-on-paper volumes by supplementing its 10,000 or so titles with rare books, like a first-edition of “The Maltese Falcon” ($8,500), first-run British imports and hundreds of signed titles, marked by neon-pink paper strips along the spines.

Mr. Penzler’s Mysterious Press also offers essays, often about the writing process, as well as original short stories by recognizable crime authors called bibliomysteries ($2.95 for essays; $4.95 for paperback bibliomysteries; and $50-plus for signed, limited-edition hardcovers).

If the selection inspires gumshoes to “come in and sleuth around,” as another sign invites them to do, the store’s impassioned community keeps them coming back. The “overqualified and underpaid” staff members, as Mr. Penzler describes them, are like super-sleuths on never-ending cases of what to read next.

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CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Jeff Unger, a regular for over two decades, recently received a different kind of recommendation from the store’s manager of 11 years, Ian Kern: a printout of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones, a Holy Grail list of 150-odd must-read mysteries compiled by the publisher Howard Haycraft and Ellery Queen, the pseudonym of a renowned crime-writing duo.

Aside from Mr. Penzler, the most voracious reader on staff is Steve Viola, the store’s paperback buyer, who consumes about 10 books a month. “But never on the job,” said Mr. Viola, who used to work at the now-defunct Partners & Crime.

Because of its ties to the publishing industry and its cozy décor, the store occasionally becomes a backdrop for events sponsored by groups like the Baker Street Irregulars, a literary society honoring the world of Sherlock Holmes and Victorian culture at large, and the Mystery Writers of America. The store also holds readings and signings.

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CreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Recently, a crowd of 25 watched the actress Barbara Rosenblat (“Orange Is the New Black”) and the writer Ann Aptaker perform a staged reading of “Genuine Gold,” the third book in Ms. Aptaker’s “Cantor Gold” series, about a crime-solving lesbian art smuggler living as an outlaw in 1950s New York. The book’s Coney Island setting inspired a buffet table of foil-wrapped hot dogs, Nathan’s French fries and a rainbow of boardwalk candy.

Ms. Aptaker is clearly a fan of the Mysterious Bookshop. “It gives voice to every possible articulation of crime and mystery in belles-lettres,” she said.

When it comes to legacy, both the shop’s and his own, Mr. Penzler’s only wish is to be remembered as the best in the murder business. “I’m increasingly aware of my own mortality,” he said.

But neither he nor his customers seem to be checking out any time soon. When a reporter arrived wearing a Sherlock Holmes T-shirt, Mr. Penzler immediately identified the graphic as cover art from an obscure, out-of-print, early 20th-century edition of “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.”

In a sea of mystery devotees, no one else in the store got the reference. For Mr. Penzler, it was elementary.

Correction: 

An earlier version of this article misstated part of the name of a list of must-read mysteries. It is the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstones, not Hayworth-Queen Cornerstones.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page MB3 of the New York edition with the headline: The Best in the Murder Business. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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