The plot thickens…

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/02/2018 (2960 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Read any good books lately?

As the co-owner of Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore, a quaint Fort Rouge shop specializing in new and used mystery and suspense novels, Michael Bumsted probably gets that question more than the rest of us. That said, his stock reply may surprise you as much as the plot twists in an Agatha Christie page-turner.  

“My usual answer is no,” he says, seated in his 940-square-foot shop on Lilac Street underneath a life-sized, cardboard cut out of Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes, next to his parents and business partners, Jack and Wendy Bumsted.

“More often than not, I read the books people don’t buy, so I can let customers know what to avoid. I have a strict, 100-page rule where if a book isn’t grabbing my attention by then, I close the cover and move onto the next.”

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In a February 2006 interview with the Winnipeg Free Press, Gaylene Chestnut and Henrietta Wilde, friends who met on the tennis court years earlier, said they came up with the notion of a bookstore geared solely to sleuth-sayers after Wilde read about one in the pages of a mystery thriller. A fair number of people scoffed at their plan, telling them crime would never pay. The pair ignored the cynics’ advice, however, and began welcoming customers to their larcenous lair 25 years ago, this summer.

Jack and Wendy live on Elm Street, blocks away from Whodunit? Because both are lifelong mystery readers themselves, they began frequenting the store on a regular basis, as soon as they clued into its existence.

In March 2007, while Wendy was enjoying “tea with the ladies,” one of the women mentioned she’d heard a rumour Whodunit? was for sale. Within 48 hours, the Bumsteds had purchased the store as a retirement-project for Jack, a former history professor at the University of Manitoba and two-time winner of the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize for excellence in Canadian non-fiction.

‘Yes, we have customers who shop around and who buy books at other stores, but what they tell us time and time again is they would never buy a mystery from anybody else… I guess you could say we want to be Corydon’s neighbourhood bookstore’– Michael Bumsted 

The timing couldn’t have been better, Michael says. A week or so before his parents bought Whodunit?, he and his four siblings were discussing what their father, a tireless worker, might do to pass the time now that he was retired and didn’t have any hobbies to speak of.

“Except our decision to buy the store wasn’t completely spur of the moment,” his mother interjects. “Jack and I had always talked about opening a small bookstore of our own in B.C. or the Maritimes after we both retired, so yes, maybe it happened sooner than we anticipated, but it wasn’t like the idea was entirely out of the blue.” (Wendy joined her husband at Whodunit? full time after leaving her teaching position at St. John’s-Ravenscourt School in 2008, while Michael came onboard in 2012, after completing his PhD.)

If you go to the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association’s Facebook page, you’ll spot a link to a directory of mystery bookstores currently operating in Canada and the United States, the majority of which are punnily-named places such as Mystery Loves Company in Oxford, Md., Murder by the Book in Warwick, R.I. and Once Upon a Crime, in Minneapolis, Minn.

Michael says at a certain point, there was bookstore dedicated to mystery fiction in almost every major city in Canada. As far as he’s aware, Whodunit? is one of the few that is still up and running.

“There’s a place in Toronto called Sleuths of Baker Street, but it’s only open three days a week, I believe. We’ve heard rumours of one in Calgary that exists in theory, but for sure, the ones that were in Ottawa and Vancouver are long gone.”

When asked how Whodunit has managed to stick around for a quarter century when similar stores have been forced to shutter their doors, the Bumsteds glance at one another, as if to say “Who wants to take a stab at that first?”

Let’s start with Jack, whom his wife and son credit with consistently being “way ahead of the curve” when it comes to mystery authors such as Ben Aaronovitch, best known for his Rivers of London series, and Jane Harper, whose debut novel The Dry is “going to win every crime prize from now until the end of the year,” according to Wendy and Michael.

“My father was probably the first person in Winnipeg to be on top of Stieg Larsson, author of the Millennium series,” says Michael. “I remember returning home one time from Scotland, where I was doing my PhD, with a suitcase full of Larsson’s new book, because they were available in the U.K. much quicker than in Canada.”

“The other weekend, the Free Press had a big writeup about Altered Carbon, which is a new Netflix series,” Wendy continues. “Not to brag, but Jack chose the Richard K. Morgan novel it’s based upon for our store’s monthly book club, three or four years ago already.” (The Bumsteds also recognize their predecessors’ foresight, mentioning the original owners were among the first people in town to stock the adventures of a certain Hogwarts alumnus, “before anybody in Winnipeg really knew who Harry Potter was.”)

A second reason for their longevity: in an era when more and more people are eschewing the printed page for e-Readers, Michael says Whodunit? has embraced the digital age as much as possible.

“You can reserve a copy of a book on our shelves through your phone or laptop, click process and pay for it, all at the same time. The only thing left to do is get here and pick it up,” he says, noting the store’s entire inventory — everything from $2 paperbacks to $100 signed first editions — can be accessed through the store’s website.

If popping by in-person isn’t possible, they offer a solution for that, too, Wendy says. On a routine basis, Michael hops in his vehicle and delivers books to home-bound individuals, including one woman, Marie, who’s been a regular customer since the store’s inception.

“On average, I get over to her place every three weeks,” Michael says. “There’s definitely a bit of a social aspect involved with our visits, especially during baseball season when our conversations tend to go on a little longer.”

Gail Bowen is the Canadian author of a series of novels featuring Joanne Kilbourn, a university professor who often finds herself mixed up in shady shenanigans in her home province of Saskatchewan.

Bowen, a Crime Writers of Canada Award-winner for her 1994 tome, A Colder Kind of Death, has been a guest reader at Whodunit? on a number of occasions and has fond memories of her initial visit in the mid-1990s.

“I remember my first book launch there was so crowded we had to put chairs out on the sidewalk,” says Bowen, from her home in Regina. “The second time, the owners Gaylene and Henrietta rented a tent for the space next door and baked cookies in the shape of question marks.

“There used to be many independent mystery stores, but of course, Amazon and the like are tough competitors,” she continues. “That said, I’m very happy the current owners are such fine stewards of that great institution on Lilac Street, and I will be back there very soon.”

A heads up to Bowen: the next time she visits, Whodunit? will probably be occupying its new, larger digs, one door over from its longtime setting. The Bumsteds expect to move into the adjacent property by June. The extra elbow room will allow them to expand their line to include science fiction and fantasy titles, as well as add more children’s books to the mix. (Michael tells us if we stick around long enough, we might get a chance to meet Quinn, a 12-year-old “from around the corner” who habitually stops by once or twice a week, to choose something to read, at bed time.)

“We’ve gotten to the point where we’ve maximized what we can do in this space,” Michael explains. “If we want to be a better, more profitable business, the only way for us to move forward is to be bigger.

“Yes, we have customers who shop around and who buy books at other stores, but what they tell us time and time again is they would never buy a mystery from anybody else. So our next goal is to be that for even more people. I guess you could say we want to be Corydon’s neighbourhood bookstore.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

David Sanderson writes about Winnipeg-centric businesses and restaurants.