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

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

  Allison Hoover Bartlett

  In the tradition of The Orchid Thief, a compelling narrative set within the strange and genteel world of rare-book collecting: the true story of an infamous book thief, his victims, and the man determined to catch him.

  Rare-book theft is even more widespread than fine-art theft. Most thieves, of course, steal for profit. John Charles Gilkey steals purely for the love of books. In an attempt to understand him better, journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett plunged herself into the world of book lust and discovered just how dangerous it can be.

  Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars? worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed ?bibliodick? (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch him. Bartlett befriended both outlandish characters and found herself caught in the middle of efforts to recover hidden treasure. With a mixture of suspense, insight, and humor, she has woven this entertaining cat-and-mouse chase into a narrative that not only reveals exactly how Gilkey pulled off his dirtiest crimes, where he stashed the loot, and how Sanders ultimately caught him but also explores the romance of books, the lure to collect them, and the temptation to steal them. Immersing the reader in a rich, wide world of literary obsession, Bartlett looks at the history of book passion, collection, and theft through the ages, to examine the craving that makes some people willing to stop at nothing to possess the books they love.

  From Publishers Weekly

  Bartlett delves into the world of rare books and those who collect—and steal—them with mixed results. On one end of the spectrum is Salt Lake City book dealer Ken Sanders, whose friends refer to him as a book detective, or Bibliodick. On the other end is John Gilkey, who has stolen over $100,000 worth of rare volumes, mostly in California. A lifelong book lover, Gilkey's passion for rare texts always exceeded his income, and he began using stolen credit card numbers to purchase, among others, first editions of Beatrix Potter and Mark Twain from reputable dealers. Sanders, the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association's security chair, began compiling complaints from ripped-off dealers and became obsessed with bringing Gilkey to justice. Bartlett's journalistic position is enviable: both men provided her almost unfettered access to their respective worlds. Gilkey recounted his past triumphs in great detail, while Bartlett's interactions with the unrepentant, selfish but oddly charming Gilkey are revealing (her original article about himself appeared in The Best Crime Reporting 2007). Here, however, she struggles to weave it all into a cohesive narrative.(Sept. 17)

  From Bookmarks Magazine

  Bibliophiles themselves, reviewers clearly wanted to like The Man Who Loved Books Too Much. The degree to which they actually did depended on how they viewed Bartlett's authorial choices. Several critics were drawn in by Bartlett's own involvement in the story, as in the scene where she follows Gilkey through a bookstore he once robbed. But others found this style lazy, boring, or overly "literary," and wished Bartlett would just get out of the way. A few also thought that Bartlett ascribed unbelievable motives to Gilkey. But reviewers' critiques reveal that even those unimpressed with Bartlett's style found the book an entertaining true-crime story.

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. • New York • 2009

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Copyright © 2009 by Allison Hoover Bartlett

  All rights reserved.

  For John, Julian, and Sonja

  For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner . . . let him be struck with palsy, & all his members blasted. . . . Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, & when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.

  —Anathema in a medieval manuscript from the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona

  I have known men to hazard their fortunes, go long journeys halfway about the world, forget friendships, even lie, cheat, and steal, all for the gain of a book.

  —A. S. W. Rosenbach, twentieth-century book dealer

  Prologue

  At one end of my desk sits a nearly four-hundred-yearold book cloaked in a tan linen sack and a good deal of mystery. My friend Malcolm came across the book while carrying out the sad task of sorting through his brother’s belongings after he committed suicide. On the sack was a handwritten note that began, “To whom it may concern,” and went on to explain that several years earlier, a friend had withdrawn the book from a college library where she worked and had accidentally taken it with her when she moved away. He wrote that she had wanted the book to be returned to the library anonymously, but that he hadn’t had time to do so. Gingerly, Malcolm lifted the large, heavy tome with gleaming brass clasps from its sack. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said as he handed it to me. My first thought was: Yes, beautiful. My second: It’s stolen.

  I woke the next morning with the book in my head. Was the story in the note true? If not, where had the book come from? I could see that it was written in German, with a sprinkling of Latin, but what was it about? Was it valuable? Malcolm agreed to let me borrow it for a while. With the help of a German-speaking friend, a librarian, and a rare book dealer, I learned that it was a Kräutterbuch (“plant book”1) of botanical medicine, by Hieronymus Bock, a botanist and physician. After book burnings in the Middle Ages, knowledge of traditional medicine had been lost, so at the time of the Kräutterbuch’s publication, in 1630, the book was a way to return to the old ways of healing, revolutionary for its time.2

  The Kräutterbuch weighs in at twelve pounds, and its cover, oak boards clad in pigskin,3 is slick but textured with embossed concentric patterns of flowers and leaves and curlicues that have taken on dark shading from the hands of those who have held it. I brought it to San Francisco rare book dealer John Windle, who told me that if you had ordered a copy of a Kräutterbuch in the 1600s, you would have paid an extra fee to have the illustrations painted, which the owner of this copy did. The colors, mostly shades of olive or silvery green, mustard yellow, and wine red, were applied sloppily, which Windle informed me is a mark of authenticity; if you come across a meticulously hand-painted copy, there’s a good chance it was executed by a bookseller’s assistant sometime in the past century in an effort to hike up the book’s value.4 To open the Kräutterbuch, you have to squeeze it with two hands, thereby releasing the etched brass clasps shaped like Egyptian columns, flared at the top like regal palm trees. The pages, when turned, make a muffled crack, not unlike the sound of a flag on a windy afternoon, and turning them releases a dry, woody smell, a combination of must and sweetness that I associate with my grandparents’ old books. I always link the aroma of an old book to whatever era it was written in, as though its fragrance had emerged directly from the setting of the story. In the case of the Kräutterbuch, this scent had traveled a long way in time and space, coming to me from Renaissance Germany. When I run my hand over the pages, I feel subtle waves, presumably warping from moisture, but none of its pages are torn. The blank endpaper is missing, but I learned that this is not unusual. Paper was expensive in the 1600s, and a blank page in a book could be cut out and used as stationery, or for wrapping fish,5 or for some other more useful purpose than sitting blankly at the front of a book. When
I asked Windle about the book’s value, he said that because it was in fairly good shape it was worth $3,000 to $5,000. I was pleasantly surprised, although since the book was not mine, I had no rational reason for feeling such satisfaction.

  Going through the book with a German-speaking friend and her mother (who was more familiar with its archaic lettering), we found remedies for all sorts of physical and mental maladies, from asthma to schizophrenia, as well as minor ailments.6 On page 50, for example, for a “bad smell in the armpit,” a long list of ingredients is recommended: pine needles, narcissus bulbs, bay leaf, almonds, hazelnut, chestnut, oak, linden, and birch, although it doesn’t indicate how, exactly, they are to be used. Dried cherries help with kidney stones and worms. Dried figs with almonds are recommended for epilepsy. My favorite remedy, though, is for low spirits. “Often we are missing the right kind of happiness, and if we don’t have any wine yet, we will be very content when we do get wine.”

  Text from the reverse sides of pages in the Kräutterbuch bleeds through in a ghostly way, making it seem that what exists on these pages might at any moment blend together or fade away entirely. But in 375 years it hasn’t. The Kräutterbuch remains much the same as when it was bound. That it hasn’t lost its fullness, its ability to resist against the clasps, is one of its most awe-inspiring qualities. It seems a stubborn, righteous thing that has lasted all these years, and it took me some time to come to the realization that in turning its pages, I probably wouldn’t harm it.

  I had learned a lot about the book, but still had no clue where it was from. I searched the Internet for information about stolen rare books, but while nothing turned up about the Kräutterbuch—even the librarian from the library mentioned in the note said that they had no record of it—I stumbled upon something even more intriguing: story after riveting story of theft. Some had occurred weeks or months before, others years ago, in Copenhagen, Kentucky, Cambridge. 7 They involved thieves who were scholars, thieves who were clergymen, thieves who stole for profit, and those whom I found most compelling: smitten thieves who stole purely for the love of books. In several accounts, I came across references to Ken Sanders, a rare book dealer who had become an amateur detective. For three years Sanders had been driven to catch John Gilkey, a man who had become the most successful book thief in recent years. When I contacted Sanders, he said that he had helped put Gilkey behind bars a couple of years earlier, but that he was now free. He had no idea where Gilkey was and doubted that I would have any luck finding him. He also believed that Gilkey was a man who stole out of a love of books. This was the sort of thief whose motivation I might understand. I had to find him.

  The more I learned about collectors, the more I began to regard myself as a collector, not of books, but of pieces of this story, and like the people I met who become increasingly rabid and determined as they draw near to completing their book collections, the more information I came across, the more I craved. I learned about vellum and buckram, errata slips and deckled edges. I read about famous inscriptions and forgeries and discoveries. My notebooks grew in number and sat in piles thicker than ten Kräutterbuchs stored, as they would have been in 1630, on their sides. As I accumulated information about the thief, the dealer, and the rare book trade, I came to see that this story is not only about a collection of crimes but also about people’s intimate and complex and sometimes dangerous relationship to books. For centuries, refined book lovers and greedy con men have brushed up against one another in the rare book world, so in some ways this story is an ancient one. It’s also a cautionary tale for those who plan to deal in rare books in the future. It may also be a lesson for those writers who, like me, approach a story with the naive belief that they will be able to follow it the way a spectator passively follows a parade, and that they will be able to leave it without altering its course.

  As I wrote this book, the noble Kräutterbuch sat in its sack at the end of my desk. I knew my friend wanted to return it, but because the librarian had told me that as far as she knew it was not theirs, I figured, what’s the hurry? Besides which, I discovered that if a book has been missing for many years, librarians will sometimes toss the attendant documents—an act of frustration, perhaps, but also of self-protection: they don’t want anyone to know they’ve let a book go missing, especially if it’s rare and valuable. The librarian from the Kräutterbuch’s supposed home informed me that as they have updated their computer systems, records of the library’s holdings have been lost. Maybe this was the case with the Kräutterbuch. As weeks, then months, passed and the book was still in my possession, I thought, I’ll deal with it later. In the meantime, I would open the book and leaf through it. An illustration of an apple tree (Apffelbaum ) shows, among the fallen fruit at its base, a skull and bone. A poisonous apple! Under another tree, men in caps and knee-length breeches vomit. Next to yet another, cherubic boys wearing nothing but sashes around their copious bellies squat and defecate. On another page, under a different kind of tree, men and women dance drunkenly. Even the illiterate would have had no doubt about each of these plants’ effects. Toward the back of the book is one of my favorite illustrations: an elaborate circular depiction of twelve faces representing twelve winds, each from a different direction, and each, cheeks out, blowing its particular remedy or threat. Overlapping this illustration, and throughout the book, are irregular brown blotches, which I learned are called foxing, a book’s age spots, usually caused by dampness or lack of ventilation.8 Some of the darkness on these pages, however, appears to be from spills of some sort. Mead? Candle wax? Tears? Every page is a mystery, a story to be puzzled out.

  Whenever I would close the Kräutterbuch and push its covers tight, there was an exhalation, a settling, before I affixed the clasps. Of course I would return it, I reassured myself. But in the meantime, I kept a book that did not belong to me, and tried not to think about what that made me.

  1

  Like a Moth to a Flame

  April 28, 2005, was bright and mild, the kind of spring day in New York City that seems full of promise, and on the corner of Park Avenue and East Sixty-sixth Street a queue of optimistic people was growing. It was opening day of the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, and they were waiting to begin the treasure hunt. The annual fair is held at the Park Avenue Armory, an anachronistic, castle-like building with towers and musket ports that one historian described as large enough to allow a four-abreast formation to march in and out of the building. There were no such formations when I arrived, but a steady stream of book-hungry people marching through the doors, eager to be among the first to see and touch the objects of their desire: modern first editions, illuminated texts, Americana, law books, cookbooks, children’s books, World War II histories, incunabula (Latin for “in the cradle,” books from printing’s infancy, roughly 1450 to 15001), Pulitzer Prize winners, natural histories, erotica, and countless other temptations.

  Inside, security guards had taken their positions and were prepared to explain, twice to the indignant, that all but the smallest purses would have to be left behind at the coat check. Overhead lights shone bright and hot, like spotlights aimed at a stage, and as I walked into the fair, I felt like an actor without a script. Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been an inveterate flea market shopper, on the prowl for beautiful and interesting objects. Some of my favorite recent finds are an old doctor’s bag I use as a purse, wooden forms for ships’ gears, which now hang on a wall in my house, and an old watch repairman’s kit with glass vials of minuscule parts. (When I was a teen, it was costume jewelry and bootleg eight-track tapes to play in my boyfriend’s van.) This book fair was altogether different. A hybrid of museum and marketplace, it was filled with millions of dollars’ worth of books and enough weathered leather spines to make a decorator swoon. Collectors strode with purpose toward specific booths, and dealers adjusted the displays of their wares on shelves while eyeing one another’s latest and most valuable finds, perched in sparkling glass cases. They even set some of their goods on coun
tertops, where anyone who pleased would be able to pick them up and leaf through them. Everyone but me seemed to know exactly what he was looking for. But what I sought was not as clear-cut as first editions or illuminated manuscripts. I love to read books and I appreciate their aesthetic charms, but I don’t collect them; I had come to this fair to understand what makes others do so. I wanted a close-up view into the rare book world, a place where the customs were utterly foreign to me. With any luck—something I’m sure every person at this fair was wishing for—I also hoped to discover something about those whose craving leads them to steal the books they love.

  To that end, I was here in part to meet with Ken Sanders, the Salt Lake City rare book dealer and self-styled sleuth I had spoken with on the phone. Sanders has a reputation as a man who relishes catching book thieves, and like a cop who has been on the force for years without a partner, he also savors any opportunity to share a good story. I had called him a few weeks earlier, in preparation for our meeting, and during that first conversation, he had told me about the Red Jaguar Guy, who stole valuable copies of the Book of Mormon from him; the Yugoslavian Scammers, whom he helped the FBI track down one weekend; and the Irish Gas Station Gang, who routinely placed fraudulent orders with dealers through the Internet and had them shipped to a gas station in Northern Ireland. But these were preliminary stories, warm-ups for the big one: In 1999, Sanders had begun working as the volunteer security chair of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America. In short, the job was to alert fellow dealers whenever he got wind of a theft so that they could be on the lookout for the missing books. At first, the work was sporadic. Every few months he would receive an e-mail or telephone call about a theft and immediately forward the information to his colleagues. But as time passed, the number of thefts climbed. There seemed to be no one type of book stolen, nor any pattern, except that most had been snatched through credit card fraud. No one knew if this was the work of one thief or a gang of many. Sanders heard from a dealer in the Bay Area who had lost a nineteenth-century diary. The next week, a dealer in Los Angeles reported losing a first-edition War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. Sanders found himself spending less and less time attending to his store and more time trying to figure out what the hell was going on.