When Maggie Topkis, one of the 3 owners of the Greenwich Village-based mystery bookshop Partners & Crime (where, incidentally, I used to work part-time a few years back) decided to launch the new mystery imprint Felony & Mayhem Press, one of the books she wanted to publish most was Elizabeth Ironside's DEATH IN THE GARDEN. As she tells the WSJ's Tom Nolan, the store used to "sell the hell out of it" in its original British edition, published back in 1995. But when that publisher let it fall out of print, there was, in Topkis's mind, a big hole to fill and she could do it.

But the tale of how DEATH IN THE GARDEN was republished is pretty unusual:

[Topkis] discovered the writer was living now not in Britain but in Washington. "Elizabeth Ironside," it seemed, was a pseudonym for Lady Catherine Manning, wife of the British ambassador to the U.S.

"So I called the British Embassy!" Ms. Topkis recalled, and eventually reached Lady Manning. "She was a little flabbergasted, and suggested that I talk to her agent." Negotiations proceeded smoothly, and in October 2005 "Death in the Garden" received its first U.S. publication in a trade-paperback edition from Felony & Mayhem.

And not only have the reviews of the book been good (including a shout-out from Maureen Corrigan at NPR) but Ironside's novel was launched in style -- at a Washington-based gala with 500 of Lady Manning's closest friends and dignitaries...