Disposing of a library

My mother loved classic crime fiction, especially by American writers: John MacDonald, Robert B. Parker, and less well known, the novels of Elizabeth Linington. Linington wrote a truly stupendous number of books, under a variety of names: Anne Blaisdell, Dell Shannon, Lesley Egan. They are all set in Los Angeles, mostly in the sixties and seventies, and in some respects do show their age. The sexism and racism of those days are reflected in her books. Still at her best, she is skillful, highly inventive, and very readable: the detectives work on several cases simultaneously and into these she weaves the private lives of the policemen, whom we follow from novel to novel as they fall in love, get married, have children, become middle-aged . . .
I think the Dell Shannon books, which feature the Kipling-reading, cat-loving Lieutenant Luis Mendoza, are the best. My mother’s copies were battered paperbacks published by Bantam and or Keyhole Crime, or ex-library books picked up in book marts or in charity bookshops. A few years ago, as a Christmas present, I used wonderful Abe.books to track down the ones she hadn’t got.
On the first trip I paid to my mother’s flat to start sorting things out last spring, I packed up her Dell Shannon novels and brought them home. As I sit here typing I can turn my head and see them on my book shelf. It’s a comfort.