Enter their world of intrigue

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Jack and Wendy Bumsted are owners of the Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore. (WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

'An addiction to crime fiction is very common. We have a fair number of people who suffer from it, and we’re grateful to them!" says outspoken former history professor Jack Bumsted. He and his wife Wendy own Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore at 165 Lilac.

In five years, it’s become much more than a bookstore. This Corydon-area business answers all kinds of needs for customers. For starters, it’s a hangout, a casual discussion centre for Winnipeg mystery nuts who often congregate at the front, like a standup cocktail party.

It’s also a well-known place for people who want to have a stimulating argument with the feisty former University of Manitoba history professor and multiple awardwinning author of Lord Selkirk: A Life. Or they may be in the mood for a quiet discussion with his Welsh-born wife, a former history teacher at St. John’s-Ravenscourt School and a total mystery nut.

Got a mystery plot swimming around in your head? Get writing. Wendy offers a monthly support group for Winnipeg mystery writers with real works in progress — a book or a short story — much-needed help for authors who write in isolation and need feedback and advice.

The store’s regular mystery-book club, for people who just want to read and discuss, is run by Jack at a much higher level than the tea-and-dainties clubs in town.

"I try to introduce them to as many different authors and genres as I can. It used to be that mystery books came mainly from Britain, the U.S. and parts of Europe. But now we get them from countries all over the world, many in translation." And they’re from different time periods — all the historical periods plus worlds in the future.

Whodunit has also created a unique Hot Tip service for customers who love certain authors and want to know when anything new or used hits the store before someone else gets their mitts on it.

"And we’re so familiar with our customers, we have been known to call X or Y, especially the older ones if they haven’t been in for a while, just to see if they’re all right," says Wendy.

Though they do have a young peoples’ section at the front, their main demographic is older, Wendy explains. "We have some in their 20s and 30s, but our customers are mostly 40 and up."

Then there’s the casual Instant Review service. Between Jack, Wendy and staff, they have read most of the authors in the store and often the entire series. Reading and reviewing for customers is part of working there. Getting tired of old favourites? You can custom-order a new author to start reading by describing what you like in a detective (male, female, age, attitude, country, degree of violence, outside interests). These days, there are many styles of mystery — psychological, toughguy, smart-mouth, police, real-life crime and the increasingly popular crossover romance or science-fiction.

Fully automated, the Whodunit? store now has a tracking system for everything you’ve already read, new and used, so you don’t accidentally re-buy a book where you discover, two chapters in: "Oh no! I already know the solution!"

Two comfy rattan chairs face the book stacks near the counter. Staff never kick anyone out.

"We’ve had people come and stay four to five hours," says Jack, nonplussed. "And they’re looking for books the whole time." If people can’t get in to pick up their beloved authors, no problem. Says Wendy: "Jack goes in the car and delivers to people who are shut in or have hurt their leg or something and can’t come by."

How did all this develop? It was the couple’s retirement dream to open a bookstore in Vancouver or P.E.I., sit on the porch and read and sell a book or two. So they planned to move to the ocean. But fate intervened.

"About six years ago, I got very ill and was forced to retire," Jack explains. But a year later, he was up for a new project.

"Then we found out the previous ladies who ran the bookstore wanted to sell it. We asked our children by email (they have five in a blended family scattered around the world), and they thought it was a great idea. The next day, we bought the store and inventory and goodwill (the customer list)," and they were off and running in a month.

Pet peeve of these ardent mystery booksellers? The people who refuse to read an author’s books out of sequence! Though it irks Jack, he tactfully says: "For those people, I think the backstory is more important to them than for a lot of us." (You know, the development of a romance, spouses or characters getting killed off, struggles with drug and alcohol addiction).

Do libraries cut into bookselling business? Jack says libraries are actually their friends, because people can only get the latest book (if it’s not already out with other people), while Whodunit aims to have at least the first and second books in any series as well as the latest.

Both owners say the worst thing about their business is the unpredictability.

"We still can’t predict customer traffic," says Jack, who reckons they could be in the store half the hours if only they knew when the rushes were coming. Wendy says they do know summer is the best time, and May is a good month.

Says Jack: "People are buying for the cottage and will come in and buy 15 to 20 used paperbacks at a time."

And Saturday is always a wild day. Neighbours with groceries and ice cream melting in the car will run in for books and slap their money down, the Corydon-area strollers pop in for a shmooze and a book, and people drive across the city for tasty new reading material.

The store is totally electronic, with 1,000 people receiving the Bumsted family’s newsletter, The Missing Clue, written by the couple and their adult childen every eight weeks online, with 400 still receiving it by snail mail. Customers all over the world are responding to their Facebook and website www.whodunitcanada. com with emails and questions.

Interestingly, online book reading hasn’t affected their business noticeably. "We don’t know if it’s made a change, because our customers are polite enough not to say who they may be reading electronically," Jack says.

"I think the best thing about the store is the people. We’ve made so many friends in the last five years." says Jack.

"And for me, it’s great being here with the books and always having something really good to read," says Wendy, the happy bookworm.

Are they pulling in big bucks? "Oh, we’re both retired, and we don’t do this for money. You couldn’t make a living out of this," they laugh. But they love the books and the social aspect of hanging out with fellow mystery fiends, er, friends.

It’s fun at their store about blood and gore!