The Last Best Friend

First published in 1967, this entry in the British Library Classic Thrillers series does a splendid job of evoking London in the mid-’60s, both swinging and decidedly criminal. When art dealer Ned Balfour’s Corsican holiday is interrupted by a telegram informing him of the apparent suicide of his friend, fellow art dealer Sam Weiss, he returns home to London. Ned is convinced that Sam, a Dachau survivor, couldn’t possibly have jumped voluntarily off a tall building. A part-time writer and full-time collector of rare books, Sims (1923–1999) takes the reader on a journey to a long-gone world where entire streets of London were devoted to the trade of rare books—items valuable enough to attract the most nefarious of mobsters. Sims captures the mood of these places with an insider’s knowledge, while keeping the brief novel moving with a plot that travels all over London, a city at both the end and beginning of an era. (Nov.)