The Mysterious Bookshop of New York City
By Lucas Compan
If you are a big fan of crime thrillers, police novels and alike, you will love this place. In downtown Manhattan we can find the world’s oldest and biggest bookstore stocking only mystery, crime fiction, espionage, and thrillers: The Mysterious Bookshop.
The door to Otto Penzler’s office in The Mysterious Bookshop marked by police tape. Image courtesy: the Mysterious Bookshop
Otto Penzelr, founder of The Mysterious Bookshop. Photo: Charles Perry
Mysteries have always been around and always been very popular, but they haven’t always been respected. Otto Penzler has had a significant hand in that transformation. He’s probably the most important figure in the history of mystery fiction who’s never written a mystery story.
You get into Otto Penzler’s New York office through a door in the Mysterious Bookshop, the world’s oldest and biggest bookstore focusing on mystery, crime fiction, espionage, and thrillers. The door is roped off with a big X made of yellow police tape reading CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. Down a flight of stairs, his office is a low-ceilinged basement cube with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on all four sides, stocked with anthologies and first editions as well as a random sampling of mass-market hardcovers and paperbacks. If the office was a store by itself, it would be the second-best mystery bookstore in the world.
The Mysterious Bookshop is located at 58 Warren Street, New York City. Photo: lucas compan
The Mysterious Bookshop main hall. Photo: lucas compan