This text is a part of Ignored, a sequence of obituaries about exceptional individuals whose deaths, starting in 1851, went unreported in The Occasions.
In 1972, Dilys Winn had an thought to open a bookstore that will promote nothing however thriller tales, however she knew nothing concerning the ebook enterprise. She went to Doubleday and Brentano’s outlets, jotted down the titles and publishers of the thriller books they carried, then known as these publishers and put in her personal orders. She discovered an empty storefront for lease, for $250 a month, adjoining to a parking storage on the Higher West Facet of Manhattan, and arrange store there.
When she opened Homicide Ink — believed to be the nation’s first bookstore devoted fully to the style — she didn’t also have a window signal. However inside the shop, compact although it was, one may discover each sort of thriller: British cozies, unsettling gothics, suspense thrillers, novels about hard-boiled detectives, police procedurals and even unpublished manuscripts — 1,500 titles in all.
Some books have been crammed into wood bookcases alongside paisley papered partitions. Others have been stacked in piles or scattered about subsequent to jars of pretzels and sweet. Flower preparations hung from the ceiling, cats and canine lay on the plaid linoleum flooring, and presiding over all of it was Winn, at her monumental companion’s desk.
Homicide Ink’s early days got here with some challenges, stated Otto Penzler, who based the favored Mysterious Bookshop in Midtown Manhattan in 1979. (It later moved to the Tribeca neighborhood and continues to be working.) The Higher West Facet was a bit dodgy in these days, he stated, and the shop was out of the best way for Midtown customers — on West 87th Road between Broadway and West Finish Avenue. The shop was formally open from Tuesday by way of Friday from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. and on weekends from 1 p.m. to 11 p.m., however Winn got here and went as she happy.
“I’d name forward and ask if she was open,” Penzler stated in an interview. “She would say, ‘I answered the cellphone, so sure, I’m open.’ I’d say, ‘I’ll be proper over,’ however after I bought there the door could be locked.”
Nonetheless, Homicide Ink was successful. On its opening day, a reporter for The New York Occasions who had simply moved to the neighborhood stumbled onto the bookstore. His favorable write-up attracted the eye of different information retailers like New York Journal, The Every day Information and Writer’s Weekly.
As phrase unfold, Winn found that her clientele had a voracious urge for food. She organized massive pillow cushions on the ground for individuals who couldn’t resist cracking open their books earlier than they bought house. For a nominal price, she provided loans of hard-to-find and out-of-print titles. She additionally established a bustling mail order enterprise, and from time to time carried uncommon first editions for collectors, although she most popular mass-market paperbacks. By the top of Homicide Ink’s first yr, the shop had greater than doubled its stock.
To thank her mates and supporters, Winn held a St. Valentine’s Day Bloodbath-themed occasion within the storage subsequent door with a menu that included Bloody Marys and a cake adorned with a revolver. (The handgun would change into the shop’s trademark, showing on its blood-red awning.) She appeared as a visitor on the TV sport present “To Tell the Truth,” the place celeb panelists requested her questions to tell apart her from two impostors.
Winn loved internet hosting occasions a lot that she offered the bookstore in 1975 and commenced holding Sunday afternoon thriller talks (admission $5) on the Steinway Live performance Corridor on the Higher West Facet that includes thriller writers, editors and different visitor audio system. She organized a 16-day thriller reader’s tour of the UK, with websites of curiosity that included the Tower of London, Jack the Ripper’s London neighborhood and the London docks. Excursions to Scotland and Wales offered extra alternatives to commune with thriller writers, crime reporters and, supposedly, ghosts.
All of the whereas, Winn was feverishly engaged on her opus: “Homicide Ink.” Revealed by Workman Press in 1977, it included offbeat essays by established figures and Winn herself (beneath numerous nom de plumes), together with character research, images, quizzes and even a information to “horrible edibles” one may keep away from — or search, relying on the motive. In 1978, the Thriller Writers of America conferred an Edgar Allan Poe award on Winn, and the following yr she printed a sequel, “Murderess Ink: The Higher Half of Thriller.”
Dilys Barbara Winn was born on Sept. 8, 1939, in Dublin. A yr or so later she went to america together with her mom, Estelle, and older brother, Rodger, abandoning her father, William Monroe Winn, an obstetrician and gynecologist who served within the British Military throughout World Struggle II. He reunited with them within the U.S. within the mid-Nineteen Forties.
Winn spent her early childhood in Perth Amboy, N.J., the place she lived amongst prolonged household and attended public college. She then went to the non-public Baldwin Faculty for ladies in Philadelphia and enrolled in Pembroke Faculty at Brown College.
In 1973, Winn informed the Brown alumni journal that she had learn her first Nancy Drew novel within the fifth grade, however that she didn’t change into a severe reader of mysteries till after school. Graduating in 1961, she landed a job as an promoting copywriter, making good cash however hating the work.
She started planning her bookstore when she was 31. Even after Homicide Ink took off, she continued to freelance part-time as a copywriter, reinvesting the proceeds in her enterprise. And she or he wrote for publications, together with The Occasions, for which she as soon as categorized numerous strategies of homicide by ingestion after which reproduced recipes from cookbooks based mostly on the dishes favored by fictional detectives.
In 1977, Winn partnered with Carol Brener, to whom she had offered the bookstore, and Carolyn Fiske, director of growth at Mohonk Mountain Home in New Paltz, N.Y., to mastermind an immersive whodunit at that resort. Held within the useless of winter, the occasion introduced collectively 250 visitors — together with the writers Stephen King and Isaac Asimov — who have been invited to look at, then remedy, a homicide staged by employees members. The electronic-music composer Pril Smiley, whose household owned and operated Mohonk, offered the rating, whereas Edward Gorey illustrated program brochures.
The occasion proved so fashionable, it was repeated yearly. However after 1982, Winn was prepared to maneuver on, and turned the enterprise over to the author Donald Westlake and his spouse, Abigail. The Mohonk Thriller Weekend, now produced by Homicide Café, is in its 47th year.
In 1983, the actress Tovah Feldshuh performed a fictionalized Winn on a short-lived television show known as “Homicide Ink.”
Two years later, Workman printed a “revived, revised, nonetheless unrepentant” version of “Homicide Ink” with dozens of recent entries by Winn and writers like Evan Hunter, Martha Grimes and Robert B. Parker. After touring right here and there, Winn surfaced in Key West, Fla., within the early Nineties and established a thriller bookstore there known as Miss Marple’s Parlour. On the facet she wrote a whole bunch of ebook opinions for Kirkus.
The Unbiased Thriller Booksellers Affiliation established a Dilys Award in 1992, offered yearly to the thriller title its member booksellers most loved promoting. It was discontinued after 2014, nevertheless, a mirrored image of the decline of unbiased bookstores. After altering arms and areas in New York a number of occasions, Homicide Ink closed in 2006.
Winn left Key West with out rationalization (some say she was suggested to take action by a psychic) and arrived in Asheville, N.C., round 2001. There, she taught grownup writing programs and took odd jobs, together with pouring tea for visitors at a rustic inn.
Well being issues finally left her housebound, and he or she died of kidney illness on Feb. 5, 2016. She was 76. In accordance together with her last needs, her stays have been donated to a medical college for college students studying tips on how to remedy the mysteries of the human physique.
