Bookstore ladies knew how to steer a kid

One of the many advantages of books is that you can stop time with them. They bear revisiting. They take us backward in time and whiplash us forward into the future.

I also owe a lot to lawn mowers. My early after-school, multi-acre exertions with them in suburban McLean, Virginia, provided me with money on weekends to board the local bus for Washington, D.C., where the bookstores were.

They were musty, dusty, and utterly beautiful.

The senior ladies who ran one of them would always spot me coming and made a point of dropping the prices on everything I was interested in.

Which, of course, was just about everything they had.

My stars — I started with the Hardy Boys and worked my way up through the classics.

And, not incidentally, the mysteries. The ladies pointed the way. They lifted me up, up and away with Erle Stanley Gardner, Arthur Conan Doyle and – great balls of fire! — Shakespeare!

A lifetime later I remain in their debt; when I wasn’t looking, they turned me into an English major.

I’m still a complete sap for Shakespeare. But I also remain a devoted fan of Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, DBE, who passed away in1976 but still very much remains in prolific and persistent print as “The Queen of Mystery,” Agatha Christie. She also remains the most widely published author of all time. All together she provided 66 detective novels,150 short stories and 20 plays, including the world’s longest-running theatrical production, “The Mousetrap.”

I can report with pleasure the accessibility of three Dame Agatha works that remain reasonably priced and are available at area bookstores or by order through them.

Exhibit A: “Agatha Christie: Poirot Investigates” ( William Morrow, 255 pp., $14.99). Straight off, well-meaning if thick-headed Hercule Poirot associate Hastings announces from the vantage point of a window the sudden approach of what appears to be an overdressed woman being shadowed by an assortment of equally overdressed men making a beeline for the great detective’s rooms.

Alas, poor Hastings, the poor man’s Watson.

Poirot: “As usual, your facts are tinged with your incurable romanticism. This is Miss Mary Marvell, the film star. She is being followed by a bevy of admirers who have recognized her. And, en passant, my dear Hastings, she is quite aware of the fact!”

Exhibit B: “Agatha Christie: Miss Marple, The Complete

Short Stories” ( William Morrow, 368 pp., $15.99). “‘Well, Aunt Jane, this one is up to you. I can’t think how on earth you managed to hit upon the truth. …’

“‘No, dear,’ said Miss Marple, ‘but you don’t know as much of life as I do. …’ ”

Rock on, Jane.

Exhibit C: “Agatha Christie: Hercule Poirot, The Complete Short Stories” ( William Morrow, 867 pp., $25.99).

“The Scotland Yard man was an old friend of ours and we greeted him warmly.

“‘Ah, my good Japp,’ cried Poirot, ‘and what brings you to see us?’

“‘Well, Monsieur Poirot,’ said Japp, seating himself and nodding to me, ‘I’m on a case that strikes me as being very much in your line…’ ”

But of course, mon ami!

Bill Ruehlmann is professor emeritus of journalism and communications at Virginia Wesleyan University.