Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime by John Dunning

First Edition
NF with NF Dust Jacket
Scribner, 2001


For me, it all began with John Dunning. My wife, who's a reference librarian, came home one day saying that she'd come across the name of a mystery writer who owned an antiquarian bookstore in Denver. We both grew up in Colorado and went to college in Denver, so we checked him out (and also checked out his book, Booked to Die).
Turned out he ran the Old Algonquin Bookstore in East Denver on Colfax, where his sleuthing protagonist also ran a shop. I'm not sure, but I think he moved his store to Cherry Creek for a while before shutting the doors in the nineties and taking up residence on the internet. I like to imagine that I have a book that came from his shop. When I lived in Denver, I was dating a girl who bought me a copy of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (Peter Pauper Press - Mount Vernon) from the bookstore of which I am thinking.
Anyway, I read Dunning's mystery and was enthralled with the idea of collecting books. Oh cliche', oh cliche'. The plot, entailing bookscouting in Denver, reminded me so much of time spent in college browsing through the used bookstores, buying reader's copies for my library of cheap yet pompous titles, that I was instantly enthralled by the idea of turning all of those rotting coverless paperbacks into gleaming hardcover first editions. My wife wasn't too thrilled about the idea.
Back to Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime. I knew the book was out there, Dunning's major self-standing novel, and had passed up the opportunity to but it once when I saw it as a later edition. A few months ago, though, I was at the Eugene Public Library booksale and saw it in the aisle and soon had my own copy for one dollar.
I took it home and set in on the shelf, then went to the library to check out a reader's copy. Anyone else do this? I feel cheap and strange every time I check out a book that I have a copy of at home. It's shameful, and it's downright pathetic when you own something you can't read for fear of damaging it and you can't find a reader's copy. Anyone got a copy of Cameron Crowe's Fast Times at Ridgemont High I can buy for under fifteen dollars?
Dunning's novel was entertaining. I'd just read Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos and Chibon's The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay and was glad to read more on the WWII theme. Also, my wife's current writing project had brought me to read Steinbeck's The Moon is Down and I was happy to come across a reference to something I'd probably be hard-pressed to have a conversation about in another book; in his novel, Dunning talks about the controversy created by a play based on Steinbeck's novella about an occupied Dutch town.
Book's like Cavalier and Clay and Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime tell you about specific fields, such as old-time radio broadcasting and the comic book industry, in addition to giving you a riveting plot line and interesting characters in compounded conflicts. The private interests of Dunning and Chabon wrap the stories in rich and provocative detail. Case in point, Dunning's knowledge about the book-selling industry not only entertained me for a few days, but also created a habit that's eaten up weeks of my time so far.