As plans do, it quickly morphed from filling in the gaps of James Lee Burke to filling in the gaps of all the authors in the core collection. I'm missing three Robert Crais books including the uber-expensive LULLABY TOWN. Books three-five of the Walt Longmire series by Craig Johnson are missing. One book from Laurie R. King's Mary Russell series did not survive the move, plus (speaking of expensive) THE BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE. I'm missing Sean Doolittle's first book, DIRT. There are some early Alan Furst books I would love to add to the collection. The Nick Stefano books from George Pelecanos would be a pretty penny but are necessary at this point.
And of course THE BLACK ECHO with blue rebate band. Fifteen years ago I could have picked this book up right around $100. That would have been pretty close to 10% of my yearly take home pay. Over the years I would run across the book. I remember a jump in price to about $150-175, and then suddenly it was $350 and above. I could say that I waited too long, but procuring back catalog books was never on the front burning. It was always about buying a $25 book that would turn into a big ticket item.
I sat down and drew up a list of authors and all of the books I needed. This was the plan. Find these books and put them on my shelf. Somewhere around two dozen books. Completely manageable. Here was a focus to my Crime Fiction collection that I was lacking. A bit expensive yes, but if it took me five years to do that would be fine by me.
Except for the one author where I was missing anywhere between 30 and 100 books depending on how you looked at it.
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