While at the Stumptown Comics Fest I picked up graphic novel, Bookhunter by Jason Shiga. As a former Special Collections bibliographer I didn’t see how I could resist. Set in 1972, the book begins with Special Agent Bay and his Library Police/SWAT team on a undercover mission to find the culprit behind several missing copies of The China Lobby in America. It is not before long that we find the extremes Agent Bay is willing to go to recover a stolen book and it is clear he believes book thieves should be punished – severely. In the next case, Bay is assigned the task of finding an 1838 English Bible that belonged to John Quincy Adams and returning it to the Oakland Public Library. As the story continues we learn Agent Bay does not take his job lightly and is willing to risk even his own life to return a book to its rightful owner. The book is a sepia-toned gem, written with librarians in mind. Shiga drops Dewey digits and cutters with a wink and a nod to cataloguers and his use of terms like incanabula, bone folder, hinge strips, and Caxton [eeek!] will make Special Collections librarians and book binders giddy with joy.

The book has some creative action scenes, including high-speed book cart chases and battle sequences involving card catalogues and books as weapons [which brought to mind the manga, Read or Die, and its superhuman library agent, Yomiko Readman's ability to control and shape paper into weapons and other objects.].

I will say some librarians may cringe at the investigative tactics of the Agent Bay and the library staff that so willingly complies to his request to search all library patrons’ records and check-out history. But of course this library is only loosely based on a true story [see Shiga's page] and is set in simpler, pre-PATRIOT Act times. I want to avoid being too critical so you will check out the book for yourself. Shiga has made it available in its entirety here. So read it, then get it on your library shelves for others to check out.