The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Ob

to, expecting to hear about books he was reading, or the research he was always doing, or his almost daily visits to the library, he reported a new problem.

“I just gotta be careful about what I say ’cause a couple of the book dealers are doing repeat complaints, tryin’ to get me in trouble.”

According to Gilkey, at his weekly parole meeting, his probation officer told him that an autograph dealer in New York named Roger Gross had alerted the police about a postcard he had spotted for sale on eBay. (In fact, Sanders had spotted it.) The postcard was signed by nineteenth-century composer Johannes Brahms, and Gilkey had stolen it from Gross a few years earlier (but the police, not having proof—since Gross hadn’t yet reported it missing—had returned it to Gilkey after the Treasure Island raid).

The week before his probation meeting, Gilkey had sold the Brahms postcard to a Colorado autograph dealer, Tod Mueller, but felt exempt from culpability. “I guess the guy [Roger Gross] was already reimbursed for the loss and he wanted his property back,” Gilkey said to me, shaking his head in disbelief. In a bizarre, but what I was beginning to grasp as typical, distancing of himself from his crimes, he said, “Now, to me, I wasn’t even involved. Gross wanted it from the guy who purchased it from me. Somehow my name came up.”

Somehow? Once Gilkey had rid himself of the postcard, he felt that he should also be rid of all blame.

Inside Brick Row, natural light streamed through the windows, illuminating books sitting in cases along every wall and under windows, and on a graceful arc of shelves that ran through the middle of the shop. It was a quiet refuge from the city streets below, and if you ignored the computer and phone on Crichton’s heavy oak desk, it could be a nineteenth-century bookshop. Thousands of majestic leather-bound books, many with gold lettering, caught the light as I walked by. Given Gilkey’s Victorian library fantasies, I could see why he favored this shop, why he chose to bring me there. Unlike Sanders’s shop in Salt Lake City, Brick Row was tidy and appeared highly ordered. I got the sense that only serious collectors would venture inside, in contrast to Sanders’s shop, where collectors mingled with people in search of a good used paperback (he offered a selection at the back of the store). The doors of the locked bookcases on the right-hand wall near the entrance had metal screens in a crosshatch pattern that made deciphering titles a challenge. These cases contained some of Crichton’s more valuable books. A film-maker would do well to use Brick Row as a set for a gentleman’s fine library. “More classier feel than some of the other bookstores that just rack them up in average bookcases,” is how Gilkey had described it.

Crichton spoke from behind his desk. “May I help you?” His question seemed to ask much more. He was looking hard at Gilkey.

“I’m not here to buy anything,” said Gilkey congenially, “just to look around, if that’s okay. We’re just here to look.”

No answer.

Crichton stood facing us. He was in his fifties, with white hair, a ruddy complexion, and clear blue eyes. He had an assured air and seemed to be the kind of person who rarely had the wool pulled over his eyes.

Gilkey referred to his list of the Modern Library’s “100 Best Novels,” and explained to me how he often looks for books on it. He pointed to the name Nathaniel Hawthorne.

“Do you have any Hawthorne?” Gilkey asked Crichton.

Crichton answered curtly, “No.”

“I know he has one,” Gilkey whispered to me.

His comment was a hint at his antagonism toward dealers, which he had made plain in our prior meetings. He’d argued that there was, in fact, widespread fraud among rare book sellers, fraud that made him not only blameless but also a victim.

One example Gilkey had cited was rebinding. Dealers, he explained, would remove the cover and title page from a second or later edition of a book, and then rebind it with a title page from a first edition that was in poor condition.

“They make it look like a first edition, first printing,” he said. “That’s part of the fraud they do. That’s actually legal.”

Later, I learned that there was nothing legal about this practice, but that it was not uncommon. The more expensive the book, the more likely it is that someone may have tampered with the binding. Such fraud is hardly new. In the eighteenth century, for example, facsimiles of pages, or “leaves,” of ancient texts were sometimes created by hand, and to near-perfect effect. Of course, these efforts did not always go undetected, particularly when the pages were printed on eighteenth-century paper with an identifiable watermark. Even now, dealers come across pages of books that have been washed to give them a uniform appearance. Reputable dealers judiciously examine books for telltale signs of rebinding, but there are less upstanding dealers who don’t. “You see a lot of that sort of thing on eBay,” one dealer remarked, “but you’ll never see it from an ABAA member. They’d be kicked out of the organization.”

As we inched down Brick Row’s bookshelves, Gilkey pointed to another book on his list. “Kurt Vonnegut,” he said. “I’d like something from him, too. And D. H. Lawrence. He’s also good.”

Crichton looked stunned and turned his back to us, then turned around again to face Gilkey. A few seconds later, while Gilkey was explaining to me which books he might like to look for, Crichton asked, “What’s your name?”

“John.”

John—as though Crichton would be satisfied with a first name! I looked down at my notes while my heartbeat threatened to drown out everything around me.

“John what?”

“Gilkey.”

Crichton waited a moment, glanced down at his desk, then looked up. He didn’t take his eyes off us as Gilkey pointed to various books and whispered, as one does in a library or museum, informing me about additional authors he was interested in: Vladimir Nabokov, Willa Cather. He commented that he stays away from Bibles.

“And who are you?” Crichton asked me.

I explained that I was a journalist writing a story about book collectors. Crichton stared a moment. He seemed to be trying to decipher the situation. He handed me his business card and asked me to call him.

“For further interviews, if you’d like,” he offered.

I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I was desperate to explain myself to Crichton, and also to hear what he had to say in Gilkey’s absence.

Surveying a row of ancient-looking tomes, resplendent with gilt titles, Gilkey said, “I think in the last ten years, a lot of rare books have just skyrocketed. If I was going to buy, I’d probably be looking for something like Salman Rushdie and Jack London and Booth Tarkington.

“See these cases,” he said, pointing to the wall of locked cases with metal screens. “You can’t really see through them.” After trying to peer through, Gilkey said, “I think they have mostly nineteenth-century literature here, so no Kurt Vonnegut.”

My tape recorder was running, and I took notes, but sporadically. I couldn’t concentrate through the tension, and prayed the tape recorder was getting it all. Crichton came closer. I realized that he might be thinking that I, too, might be a thief, because as a reporter, I was asking too few questions. I was letting Gilkey go on, undirected.

“How is the shop organized?” I asked Crichton.

Curtly, he waved his hand in one direction. “These three or four tiers are nineteenth-century English literature.” He waved it in another. “That’s twentieth-century, English and American,” he said. “And there’s some other, more valuable first editions over here, organized the same way. Everything behind here is . . . uh . . . reference . . . Uh—sorry,” he said, clearly distracted, “I’m right in the middle of doing several things today, so why don’t you give me your number so I can call you. I do a lot of interviews with people.”

In a tone that was somewhat louder, Gilkey then told me how at age nine he bought his first rare book, a first edition of The Human Comedy by William Saroyan, published in 1943, for $60, an unlikely story from the start. “And what happened was they actually cheated me,” he said. “I found out six or seven years ago that it wasn’t a first edition, first printing, which is how they sold it. So that’s why I do a lot of research with bibliographies, check the details.”