What are your bookstore rituals? For example, where do you go first in a store?
Lee Child: My first concern is how good of a breakfast I ate. How much weight can I carry home? I know there are going to be 20 or 30 titles I want. I usually glance at the front tables but start at the back, for the undiscovered gems. Then I calculate how much strength I have left and pick up what I want from the new titles.
Andrew Child: For me this depends on whether I’m browsing or going in for a specific title. I much prefer to browse! How I approach this depends on the layout of the store. Does it have different rooms? Multiple levels? I take stock of the geography and go from there, usually at random. For example, there’s a store in the town nearest to us in a building that started life as a brothel. There’s a central “parlor” that houses the new releases and popular categories, and a bunch of side rooms that now contain the more specialized genres. I like to pick one of the smaller rooms on a whim, start there and move on as the mood takes me. The only consistent factor in visiting a bookstore is to make sure I take a very large bag.
Tell us about your favorite library from when you were a child.
LC: I started at a tiny local place but quickly read all the books there, so I graduated to a bigger library in the neighboring municipality, which was a long walk and a scary trip on a high footbridge over a canal. I remember it as a huge glass-fronted palace full of books. Ironically, I just got involved in a campaign to secure its funding, and as an adult I realize it’s perfectly normal size. That place both enabled and created my life.
AC: My favorite is my first—the same tiny local place that Lee started in. However, the family moved before I had read everything there and the library in the town we wound up in was just not the same. Not welcoming in the same way. Something to do with the layout or the lighting, maybe? Or the way the librarians sat behind glass screens at a high, impersonal counter? The experience of visiting wasn’t as much fun, but I still went there. I had to. It was the only source of books.
“I have literally never walked past a bookstore without going in and checking it out.”
While researching your books, has there ever been a librarian or bookseller who was especially helpful, or a surprising discovery among the stacks?
LC: Deep stock in a chain bookstore helped me: I found a book about money laundering in the narcotics trade—moving and storing so much cash was an industrial-sized problem for the bad guys. The details within led to the spine of my first book, Killing Floor.
AC: I find that “research”—the profound, story-defining kind rather than fact-checking—works the opposite way around to what people often expect. I never set out to find an interesting topic to write about. I write about a topic I already find interesting, and the reason I find something interesting often stems from a suggestion from a bookseller. For example, a book about white-collar crime that was recommended to me in a store contained a section on malicious ways to short stock, and that became a central theme in Too Close to Home.
Do you have a favorite bookstore or library from literature?
LC: Not really—I’m so thrilled with the real-world examples I didn’t feel the need for more.
AC: Not literature, but TV. I would love to visit the shop in Black Books, an offbeat British comedy in which the curmudgeonly store owner seems intent on not selling books.
Do you have a “bucket list” of bookstores and libraries you’d love to visit but haven’t yet? What’s on it?
LC: All of them. Every single one has a quirk or a choice that makes them fascinating. I have literally never walked past a bookstore without going in and checking it out.
AC: My favorites tend to be the kind of quirky gems you discover by chance, tucked away down a backstreet or in a neighborhood you stray into by mistake. As a result, there’s no real way to foresee what they’ll be and where you’ll find them, so it’s not possible to make a list in advance.
What’s the last thing you checked out from your library or bought at your local bookstore?
LC: Yesterday I bought a book about linguistic choices in framing political arguments. I love insights into how things are done.
AC: My most recent purchase was The Battle of the Beams by Tom Whipple, which is about the way that the development of radar shaped the outcome of World War II.
How is your own personal library organized?
LC: Organized is a big word, and I’m not sure I can lay claim to it. Generally, I keep fiction and nonfiction in separate rooms, or at least separate bookcases. Beyond that, nothing. Any form of organizing means every time you get a book, you have to move every other book. That’s way too much!
AC: Lee may be horrified at this, but Tasha [Alexander, his wife and fellow mystery novelist] and I keep our library organized via an app. Every book we buy is added—mainly because we got fed up with the quantity of duplicate purchases we were making.
Bookstore cats or bookstore dogs?
LC: Dogs for sure, the same as every other walk of life.
AC: Why pick between them? Why not have one (or more) or each?
What is your ideal bookstore-browsing snack?
LC: I’m part of a generation that saw books as expensive, rare and precious, so I wouldn’t dream of eating or drinking in a bookstore or library.
AC: I don’t eat or drink while browsing, either, but I do love it when bookstores have a built-in coffee shop. That way I can dive right into my newest purchase and caffeinate at the same time.
Photo of Lee and Andrew Child by Tasha Alexander.
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