“The Bookseller”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Spanish Covers

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Information

• First published:
  • January 1987 issue of Playboy
• Trivia:
  • This story is very closely based on a much earlier story called “Clerical Error” by James Gould Cozzens, which also involves nefarious bookstore owners attempting to blackmail a grieving widow into paying for embarrassing materials.

• Related books:
  • A Second Roald Dahl Selection: Eight Short Stories
  • Deception
  • Lamb to the Slaughter and Other Stories
  • The Best of Playboy Fiction Volume 2 (Audio Cassette)
  • The Best of Roald Dahl
  • The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl
  • The Complete Short Stories: Volume Two
• Magazine publications:
  • Playboy (v34 #1) - January 1987
• Radio Shows:
  • 15 Minute Drama (2016)

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Plot Description

This very adult story was originally published in Playboy and probably shouldn’t be read by any children without the consent of their parents. With that in mind, I’m going to keep the plot/description rather simple and vague.

Spoiler warning! This story is about Mr. William Buggage and his secretary Miss Tottle and the secret business they run out of Buggage’s Rare Book Shop in London. Every day they read the obituaries and draft custom invoices to send to the grieving widow. The invoices list various European books of pornography and sexual deviance. The horrified widows always pay quickly to keep the matter from the presses. Mr. Buggage and Miss Tottle have made thousands of pounds using this method, and they use their ill-gotten gains to take lavish trips together. (They really are disgusting people – rather like The Twits.) Eventually they are caught when one of the widows points out that her late husband was blind and that the invoice is therefore a fake.

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Spanish Covers