The books were literally flying off the shelves," said Kate Mattes, founder and owner of the landmark Kate's Mystery Books in Cambridge, Mass. It was a Sunday afternoon in April 1986, and a bus with a novice driver at the wheel had flattened a parked car, jumped the median strip and came crashing through the wall of Mattes's store. The crash obliterated a bathroom and fireplace and sent torrents of water roaring into the basement—and onto a valuable inventory of books. Although a bus/bookstore collision is a rarity in the business, what happened next was equally unusual—the outpouring of help for Mattes from mystery writers and the reading public throughout New England and beyond.
Because the building was knocked off its foundations, it had to be emptied of all books. Among the 30 friends who helped were author s Jeremiah Healy, Linda Barnes, Jane Langton, Charlotte MacLeod, Tony Kelner, Bill Tapply and Rick Boyer, plus many customers. "Everybody took one little area of the inventory—by alphabet—and marked it and put their name on it, then held those books for two months until we were ready to open up again," Mattes told PW. "No one was hurt. It all worked out fine. It was kind of a miracle."
Kate's Mystery Books, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this past spring, is an unusual place, located on the first floor of a blood-red Victorian house behind a small lawn studded with faux tombstones at 2211 Massachusetts Avenue, a few miles north of Harvard Square. Inside, the shelves are all but groaning with books, or, perhaps, one should say hissing, because there are black cats everywhere—cat dolls, figurines, clocks, paperweights, puppets, in ceramic, iron, cardboard and glass. "Do you think I have too many?" Mattes laughs. She's the blonde extrovert in a hot-pink muumuu, ringing up a sale while ordering more books on the phone.
What makes Mattes's bookstore such a longtime hit with readers and writers alike? "I think people have a real personal feeling for this store," she said. "When you see this many mystery books, and compare it to the mystery sections in other stores, you keep coming back." The shelves are organized into unexpected categories, like "Strong Women Protagonists," "Gay and Lesbian" and "Malice Domestic," but the camaraderie and community evolve somewhat from mystery readers themselves. Her customers readily offer fellow browsers quick recommendations while shopping the intimate store. A local newspaper reporter writing a feature on the store became romantically interested in a woman on Kate's staff and hung around until Mattes suggested he ask her out. They are now married.
The store also serves as a de facto writers' center. The New England chapter of Mystery Writers of America has met monthly at Kate's for the last six years. As a founding member of Sisters in Crime, Mattes holds that group's meetings there too. Her newsletter, Kate's Mystery Books, began the year the store opened. She often helps libraries seeking advice about putting together panels of mystery writers.
Kate's is a compulsory stop for authors like Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky. When P.D. James lived in the area and taught at Boston University, her informal writers' group, the "Cadaver Club," met at Kate's. And, in December, a couple dozen local writers autograph books at her annual holiday party. "It's great for the readers, and it's turned out to be great for the authors too because they don't get to see each other often," Mattes said.
Kate Mattes grew up in Iowa, in a household "where you had to read to survive." Both her parents were editors, her father at the Des Moines Tribune and her mother at the Des Moines Register. The first mystery she read as a child was by British novelist Enid Blyton. She went on to become addicted to Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie. After majoring in religious studies at Wisconsin's Beloit College, she worked in New York and Boston, earned an M.S.W. at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., then did family and children's therapy at a St. Louis Hospital.
The early deaths of her parents jolted her into doing what she'd always wanted to do—open a bookstore. Through her late brother, literary agent Jed Mattes, she contacted Otto Penzler at the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. "He offered to teach me everything he knew if I worked for him for free four days per week one fall until Christmas," Mattes said. Gradually she gained the confidence to recommend books to customers and to recognize that she already knew a lot about mysteries.
"The best advice Otto gave me was to buy the place where I had my store, so I could pay myself rent," Mattes remembered. Having gravitated toward Massachusetts once again, she opened Kate's Mystery Books on May 13, 1983, with good friend Robert B. Parker on hand with flowers and champagne.
Last year, Mattes launched her own imprint, Kate's Mystery Books, through Justin, Charles & Co., Publishers in Boston. "We published our first book in January of this year," she said. "So far, I've found it a lot of fun. I sort of see it as an extension of the store. I'm saying 'I like this book.' Anyone can buy it and know it's a good mystery." The imprint's first releases were reprints of two popular British novelists: Scarlett Thomas's Dead Clever (the first mystery in a trilogy) and Ken Bruen's White Trilogy (a trade paperback omnibus that contains Bruen's A White Arrest, Taming the Alien and The McDead). They were followed in March by Bill Eidson's The Repo: A Jack Merchant and Sarah Ballard Novel, the imprint's first original novel.
As the proprietor of an independent bookstore, Mattes finds herself selling "a lot of back stock, plus a lot of used paperbacks." She is constantly looking to "discover" and promote new authors before the big stores spy them. "And it's getting harder to find those little gems," she said. Still, the big chains refer customers to Kate's to snag hard-to-find titles. "I really don't feel like I'm working," she continued. "Bob Parker and I were talking about this the other day. I said, 'Bob, I can't imagine you not writing,' and he said, 'Oh, no, I'll write until the day I die.' That's the way I feel about my store."
