Hound a mystery

A bookhound, Henry Sullivan buys and sells books he finds at estate auctions and library sales around Boston and often from the relatives of the recently deceased. Hes in his late thirties, single, and comfortably set in his ways. But when a woman from his past, Morgan Johnson, calls to ask him to look at her late husbands books, he is drawn into the dark machinations of a family whose mixed loyalties and secret history will have fatal results. As the true story unfolds, its mysteries are also of the everyday sort: love found and love lost, life given and life taken away. At the center is Henry himself, with his troubled relationships and his love of old books. Theres his landlady Mrs. Prowder whose death unsettles Henrys life and begins the sequence of events that overturns it. Theres the secret room his friend Albert discovers while doing "refuse removal," a room that reveals the story of a woman who lived and loved a century ago. And throughout the novel are those of us whose lives revolve around books: the readers, writers, bookstore people, and agentsas well as Henry, the bookhound, always searching for the great find, but usually just getting by, happy enough to be in the pursuit.