Dunning, John 1942–

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Dunning, John 1942–

PERSONAL: Born January 9, 1942, in New York, NY; son of Elmo Michael and Helen Dunning; married Helen Rose Korupp (a caseworker), May 30, 1969; children: James, Katharine. Education: Attended school in Charleston, SC.

ADDRESSES: Home—P.O. Box 18514, Denver, CO 80218. Agent—Harold Ober Associates, 40 E. 49th St., New York, NY 10017.

CAREER: Pittsburgh Plate Glass and William M. Bird & Co., both Charleston, SC, glass cutter, 1959–64; groom for horse trainer Lawrence Kidd, Idaho Falls, ID, 1964–65; groom for various horse trainers in CA, 1965; Denver Post, Denver, CO, clerk, 1966, reporter, 1966–69, investigative reporter, 1974; freelance writer, 1970–; Old Algonquin Bookstore, Denver, CO, owner and operator, 1984–. Press secretary for various political campaigns, including Pat Schroeder, U.S. congress-woman from Denver, and Dale Tooley, former Denver district attorney; part-time instructor at University of Denver and Metropolitan State College; radio show producer and host, KFML, 1972–78, KADX, 1978–82, and KNUS, 1982–; worked on the soundtrack for the motion picture Thieves like Us, 1973.

MEMBER: Colorado Authors' League.

AWARDS, HONORS: Colorado Association for Retarded Children award, 1974, for Denver Post series exposing conditions in state homes for the retarded; Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination, Mystery Writers of America, 1981, for Looking for Ginger North; Nero Wolfe Award.

WRITINGS:

The Holland Suggestions, Bobbs-Merrill (New York, NY), 1975.

Tune in Yesterday (nonfiction), Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1976.

Looking for Ginger North, Fawcett (New York, NY), 1980.

Denver, Times Books (New York, NY), 1980.

Deadline, Fawcett (New York, NY), 1981.

The Arbor House Treasury of True Crime, Arbor House (New York, NY), 1985.

On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime (novel), Scribner's (New York, NY), 2001.

"CLIFF JANEWAY" MYSTERY SERIES

Booked to Die, Scribner's (New York, NY), 1992.

The Bookman's Wake, Scribner's (New York, NY), 1995.

The Bookman's Promise, Scribner's (New York, NY), 2004.

Booked Twice (omnibus), Scribner's (New York, NY), 2004.

The Sign of the Book, Scribner's (New York, NY), 2004.

The Bookwoman's Last Fling, Scribner's (New York, NY), 2004.

ADAPTATIONS: Dunning's works have been adapted as audiobooks, including Deadline, Recorded Books (Prince Frederick, MD), 2000; Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime, Simon & Schuster Audio (New York, NY), 2000; The Bookman's Promise, Recorded Books (Prince Frederick, MD), 2004; and The Sign of the Book, Recorded Books (Prince Frederick, MD), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: In Booked to Die John Dunning, a former Denver police-beat reporter-turned-rare-book dealer, introduces Cliff Janeway, who has the same career history, in what a critic for the New York Times Book Review called "a honey of a debut." The reviewer went on to state: "A joy to read for its wealth of inside knowledge about the antiquarian-book business and its eccentric traders, Mr. Dunning's novel is too good to coast on its charm. This is a soundly plotted, evenly executed whodunit in the classic mode; a little clumsy, perhaps, when it sidesteps into the meaner streets, but smart and assured in its own territory on Book Row, where a guy will kill you for a mint copy of Raymond Chandler's Lady in the Lake." Shortly after opening Twice Told Books, Janeway must revive his skills as a detective to investigate the murders of two local book scouts. When a clerk in his store is brutally added to the list of bodies, nearly everyone falls under suspicion, including a woman with whom Janeway has fallen in love. In a case of life imitating art, first editions of the award-winning Booked to Die increased rapidly in value, selling for seven times the book's cover price little more than a year after publication.

Cliff Janeway returns in The Bookman's Wake. The plot revolves around the brothers Darryl and Richard Grayson, legendary printers who designed and published beautifully crafted limited-edition books until their deaths in a fire in 1969. Janeway is convinced by a former police colleague to track down a woman that has purportedly stolen a rare Grayson edition of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, a book that some experts claim was never published. Joining forces with the Graysons' biographer, Trish Aandahl, Janeway not only pursues the mythical volume but also explores the possibility that the fiery death of the brothers was a double murder rather than an accident. "Mr. Dunning can't resist writing lengthy, luxurious passages about the craftsmanship of the great print men," observed Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times Book Review. A Publisher Weekly contributor commented that these passages "interrupt the novel's flow." Stasio, however, contended that "they shouldn't bother anyone who loves books—and their covers." Bill Ott, writing in Booklist, credited The Bookman's Wake with "inventive plotting." Emily Melton, also in Booklist, praised Dunning's "catchy prose and engaging dialogue," and found Cliff Janeway to be "an intriguing blend of the erudite and the down-to-earth."

Dunning returned to his cop-turned-bookseller in 2004 with a third "Cliff Janeway" series novel, The Bookman's Promise. Here Janeway gets involved in tracking down a first edition of a work by the nineteenth-century British explorer and writer Richard Burton. Enlisted to search by the aged Josephine Gallant, whose grandfather was a companion of Burton's and who had once owned the sought-after editions, Janeway continues the hunt after Gallant herself dies. The trail leads from Baltimore to Charleston and into Civil War history in this "literate" entry in the series, as a contributor to Publishers Weekly described it. The same reviewer felt that "too many extraneous characters and some tedious dialogue slows the action, but the book-collecting background is sure to appeal to a wide range of mystery readers." Bill Ott remarked in Booklist that Dunning's fans had been waiting eight years for the return of Janeway, and in Ott's opinion "they won't be a bit disappointed by this compelling mix of hard-boiled action and exquisitely musty book lore." Library Journal reviewer Rex E. Klett praised the "fascinating highlights of Burton's life, glimpses into the book trade, a human protagonist, and crisp prose," while a critic for Kirkus Reviews concluded that Bookman's Promise, though "not as tightly wound" as earlier installments to the series, still is "endlessly inventing, exhilarating, and literate."

Dunning quickly followed with another Janeway book titled The Sign of the Book, which finds Janeway investigating a case in which Laura Marshall has confessed to killing her husband. Janeway takes the case because the woman's friend and attorney, Erin D'Angelo, is his lover and because he learned that the woman may have many signed first editions in her home in the mountains. Complicating Janeway's investigation is an autistic boy, who may have witnessed the shooting, and a local bullying sheriff. Reviewing the novel for Publishers Weekly, a contributor wrote: "Dunning writes with such confidence and assurance the reader cannot help being drawn into this compelling whodunit." "This is the kind of thing Janeway fans love," Bill Ott predicted in Booklist.

The Bookwoman's Last Fling finds Janeway involved in another mystery after horse trainer H.R. Geiger dies before Janeway can arrive to appraise his rare book collection. Soon, another person is dead and Janeway himself is targeted. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted the author's "exceptional gifts at plotting and characterization."

Dunning writes on a manual typewriter given to him by his father because he feels that "computers are destructive to the creative process," as he explained in an interview with Pam Lambert in People. Discussing his own collection of eight thousand rare books, Dunning told Lambert: "To me, [book hunting is] the second greatest game in the world. The greatest is writing them yourself." When asked about his statement that Cliff Janeway was "the man I wish I were," he described his hero as "a guy with courage you always wish you would have—and that you're afraid you wouldn't."

While primarily known for his Janeway mysteries, Dunning has written other books, too, including the nonfiction On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio.

This book includes information on more than one thousand radio shows that aired from the 1920s through the 1960s. The author offers a wide range of information, such as broadcast dates, cast members, and interesting anecdotes. Carol J. Binkowski, writing in the Library Journal, called the book "a valuable reference tool, offering new discoveries and insights." A Booklist contributor commented that "this volume is an interesting portrait of a time when radio was more than background music or xenophobic talk shows."

Dunning followed up on his interest in old-time radio with the novel Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime. It is 1942 and Jack Dulaney, a failed novelist and jail escapee, takes a job writing scripts for a Jersey shore radio station. Soon, Dulaney is writing controversial stories while his girlfriend looks for her missing father. Eventually, Dulaney discovers that the radio station may have a connection to the missing man as well as with German spies. "The espionage plot is nicely developed, and the home-front ambience … proves thoroughly compelling, but it's the authenticity of the radio world that really drives the story," asserted Bill Ott in Booklist. In a review for the Library Journal, Karen T. Bilton commented that the author "has created an intriguing premise that makes radio production a central force tying the characters and plot together."

Dunning once told CA: "Having no formal education (I quit school in the tenth grade to join the army), I found it tough getting the kind of jobs I wanted. I've always wanted to write, but no newspaper would touch me. I read constantly, even took a professional speed-reading course, but that's no substitute for degrees on a resume. One frustrated city editor in Sacramento, who badly needed help, took one look at my 'experience' and said, 'God, why do they send me guys like this?' Eventually, after pestering the personnel director for several years, I landed at the Denver Post as a file clerk in the library. From there I was able to move up and into writing. First I wrote book reviews and later some news stories. Finally a great city editor named John Snyder gave me a job. After my first year, Snyder put me onto the Post's three-man investigative team.

"I've learned that to stay alive as a writer, you have to do a lot of things in addition to writing. Once, interviewing University of Denver chancellor Maurice Mitchell for the Christian Science Monitor, I found out that Mitchell had never graduated from college. How, I asked him, can you be chancellor at a university that requires doctorates of its professors if you don't have a degree of your own? He said that when his lack of education became a factor in his life, he went to his local college and asked to teach a course. 'Once you've taught something, they never question your competence in that area again.' So I started teaching a course, which I still do on occasion, at the University of Denver. In addition, I've taught journalism courses at Metropolitan State College."

In 1985, Dunning wrote CA about the changes he had made in his writing life: "I came to realize one day (and it was just about that sudden, though it's taken me a couple of years to disassemble the old system and put together the new) that I no longer wanted to write 'for a living.' I'd done that for a decade, and I like my writing and my writing life better when my livelihood has little or nothing to do with it. I was tired of dying a thousand deaths waiting for some editor to pass [judgement] on two years' work. I was tired to death of formula fiction, tired of reading it and being asked to write it, tired of bloodless people moved around on cardboard backgrounds.

"This doesn't mean I want to disown everything I've done. Some wonderful things have been done under the cloak of 'commercial writing,' but I do resent the notion that every successful book establishes a trend, and that most other books in that genre, for the next several years, must be clones of that big one. That's where the Old Algonquin Bookstore came in. My commitment to writing was as strong as ever, but I did want to remove myself from the literary rat race. What better way than turning to a less creative, still exciting, but equally perilous part of the book business itself? Finding books is almost as much fun as writing them. We opened the bookstore in June, 1984, and have never looked back.

"What's more, my writing regimen adapted itself at once. I write all morning, then come in and scout books. I don't know of a better way to live. I don't know if it makes me a better writer, or even a different one. I do know it makes me a happier one."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 1995, Emily Melton, review of The Bookman's Wake, p. 1381; January 1, 1998, Bill Ott, review of The Bookman's Wake, p. 783; September 1, 1998, review of On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, p. 162; September 15, 2000, Bill Ott, review of Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime, p. 188; February 1, 2004, Bill Ott, review of The Bookman's Promise, p. 932; October 15, 2004, Candace Smith, review of The Bookman's Promise, p. 432; January 1, 2005, Bill Ott, review of The Sign of the Book, p. 825.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2004, review of The Bookman's Promise, p. 62; January 1, 2005, review of The Sign of the Book, p. 22.

Library Journal, September 1, 1998, Carol J. Binkowski, review of On the Air, p. 170; November 1, 2000, Karen T. Bilton, review of Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime, p. 133; March 1, 2004, Rex E. Klett, review of The Bookman's Promise, p. 110; September 15, 2004, Michael Adams, review of The Bookman's Promise, p. 8; August 1, 2005, Michael Adams, review of The Sign of the Book, p. 1308.

New York Times Book Review, February 2, 1992, review of Booked to Die; May 7, 1995, Marilyn Stasio, review of The Bookman's Wake.

People, June 12, 1995, Pam Lambert, review of The Bookman's Wake, and "The Thrill of the Hunt," interview with author, p. 27.

Publishers Weekly, December 13, 1991, review of Booked to Die, p. 48; February 13, 1995, review of The Bookman's Wake, p. 67; November 13, 2000, review of Two O'Clock, Eastern Wartime, p. 84; February 16, 2004, review of The Bookman's Promise, p. 155; January 3, 2005, review of The Sign of the Book, p. 39; March 27, 2006, review of The Bookwoman's Last Fling, p. 60.

San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, CA), March 24, 2004, John Orr, review of The Bookman's Promise.