Though I dig books, am a library nut and an L.A. I waded into "The Library Book" with trepidation.
The book dives deep into the work and devotion of librarians, knowledgeable and ever-patient, whether going through map collections or fielding questions such as, "How long do parrots live?" Let's just say arson is a difficult crime to prove. The suspect, Harry Peak, suffered from an inability to keep his alibi straight. It would eventually lead investigators to focus on a troubled, rootless, name-dropping would-be actor. But librarians remembered a blond young man who was shooed out of the closed history stacks. The library staff worried that it might be a disgruntled employee. After the fire, the city posted requests for clues on billboards and on radio ads. Orlean turns this into a whodunnit, focusing on the search for an arson suspect. One of the most complicated blazes the fire department ever tackled, it exceeded 2,000 degrees and destroyed or damaged more than 1 million books. But, as it turns out, it is so much more.Īt its core, it's the story of one of the worst building fires in L.A. history, a 1986 conflagration in the city's Central Library, an architectural landmark. Just as the name implies, Susan Orlean's "The Library Book" (Simon & Schuster, 317 pp., ★★★½) celebrates the love of books and the wonder of public libraries.
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