Reader’s Twelve-Step

My name is Margo and I am an addict. You can’t tell by looking at my wrists or my liquor cabinet or my pupils. But one look at my bookshelves reveals the awful truth. I am a mystery junkie.

All my life, in times of stress, I’ve sought escape in the whodunit. Cherry Ames, R.N., nursed me through my parents’ divorce, Lord Peter Wimsey shone as a romantic beacon when I was dating creeps, and Kinsey Milhone saved me from being bored to death during a spell of unemployment. When I’m on a bender, I can go through the most prolific author’s oeuvre in a single week.

Only my pusher, Terry Baker, understands. Recently, desperate for a fix, I connected with her at Small World Books and Mystery Annex, the cavernous bookstore on the Venice boardwalk (1407 Ocean Front Walk), which she co-owns with her friend Mary Goodfeder. The fog was rolling in, the usual bad band at the adjacent Sidewalk Cafe was tuning up to massacre the Beatles, but Baker was high as a kite. “When a poet writes a mystery it’s really special,” she exclaimed, handing me the latest James Lee Burke.

Baker began the Mystery Annex in Ocean Park in 1982 and joined Goodfeder at the congenial, beach landmark, Small World, five years later. She stocks “thousands” of thrillers, a lot of which are out of print, and mainlines at least a mystery a day.

I wondered why a mystery is so addictive. “Well, it takes you away from reality,” Baker said, “and it offers a microscopic world order put right. Ultimately, the reader is satisfied, because the bad guy gets what he deserves.”

I also find it comforting to know that no matter how impossible life seems, all the loose ends will be wrapped up by the last page. I wish I had Hercule Poirot around to solve my problems.

On the way to the cash register, Baker added a Patricia D. Cornwell and the new L. R. Wright to my stack. “Mysteries are becoming the most lucrative genre,” my pusher said. I wasn’t surprised. I’ve never gotten out of her store for under $30.

But I can quit anytime.

Yeah, right.