“[Israel’s] fish-out-of-water dilemmas and encounters with kooky locals will resonate with Alexander McCall Smith fans.” — Publishers Weekly   Author Ian Sansom “clearly loves a good laugh” ( Washington Post ), as his delightful mystery series featuring rumpled, fish-out-of-water, Jewish vegetarian librarian Israel Armstrong indisputably proves. The Bad Book Affair is Israel’s fourth hilarious adventure as he tools around Ireland in a rattletrap bookmobile trying to solve the mystery of a missing teenage girl while trying to keep his mess of a personal life in order. Sansom’s Mobile Library Mystery series has made a big splash with critics on both sides of “the Pond.” The New York Times Book Review loves their “formidable reserves of insight and humor,” while the London Times calls Israel “one of the most original and exciting amateur sleuths around.” *Starred Review* Israel Armstrong, the English, Jewish, vegetarian mobile librarian, is back for his fourth despondent slog (after The Book Stops Here, 2008) through the north of Northern Ireland. He’s as out of his element as ever—he’d hoped for a brownstone in Brooklyn and breakfast with Paul Auster—and the mystery is as incidental to the craic as ever, too. This time, Israel’s lending of a book from “The Unshelved,” a selection of under-the-counter books that includes both Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, makes him a suspect in the disappearance of the borrower, the daughter of a redemption-seeking political candidate. A reluctant Israel investigates only to clear his name, with colleague and comic foil Ted Carson—the two are surely one of the genre’s great comedy teams—doing the driving. But what’s different this time is that Israel’s ongoing existential crisis, while played for laughs, isn’t only played for laughs. The death of a dear friend forces Israel into meaningful introspection, and Sansom offers genuinely affecting scenes of aging, death, and grief that make his still-generous humor all the more sweet. Though this series hasn’t always lived up to its terrific potential, The Bad Book Affair augurs very well for the future. --Keir Graff “The great pleasure in this romp derives from Israel’s glum-in-his-Guinness rueful worldview.” - Washington Post “Formidable reserves of insight and humor.” - New York Times Book Review “A wonderfully comic novel...Ian Sansom has an acute sense of the absurd, and does not allow sympathetic intimacy to stand in the way of some wicked barbs.” - Daily Mail (London) “A humane, big-hearted and sometimes devastatingly funny book.” - LA Weekly “A clever, affectionate poke in the ribs…. Sansom...discovers an exceptionally lively world.” - Kirkus Reviews “An endearing first novel...People cross paths, hook up, split up, say good-bye. Narrative unity derives less from the story than from the amiable persona of the narrator himself, in all his rambling, digressive warmth, and his mild insistence throughout - Daily Telegraph (London) “…the dialogue is certainly amusing. Readers who enjoy send-ups of crime novels, talk-radio hosts, city pomposities and rural eccentricities will queue up for the series…” - Kirkus Reviews “[THE BOOK STOPS HERE] succeeds as a light farce . . . The book’s high point is the acerbic portrayal of the personalities making up the Mobile Library Steering Committee, but most every page will elicit a grin, if not a chuckle.” - Publishers Weekly “[Sansom’s] fish-out-of-water dilemmas and encounters with kooky locals will resonate with Alexander McCall Smith fans” - Publishers Weekly “[a] comic masterpiece” - The Belfast Telegraph “A work of tender and bonhomous refraction. ...Sansom is emphatically unpretentious in his portrayal of the ordinary lives of ordinary folk, and his gentle humor buoys their humdrum lives…pleasing, amusing and honest.” - New York Newsday Israel Armstrong—the hapless duffle coat wearing, navel-gazing librarian who solves crimes and domestic problems whilst driving a mobile library around the north coast of Ireland—finds himself on the brink of thirty. But any celebration, planned or otherwise, must be put on hold when a troubled teenager—the daughter of a local politician—mysteriously vanishes. Israel suspects the girl's disappearance has something to do with his lending her American Pastoral from the library's special "Unshelved" category. Now he has to find the lost teen before he's run out of town—while he attempts to recover from his recent breakup with his girlfriend, Gloria, and tries to figure out where in Tumdrum a Jewish vegetarian might celebrate his thirtieth birthday. Ian Sansom is the author of 10 books of fiction and non-fiction. He is a former Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and a former Writer-in-Residence at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry in Belfast. He is currently a Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. He is a regular