Who steals books?

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Notoriously, during the riots in London five years ago, Waterstones was the only high-street shop that wasn’t looted. But that depressing lack of book-pinching belied a thriving -tendency. Think of a bookshop and you think of a musty, hushed spot where people browse and whisper. In fact, it is thick with thieves.

As a bookseller, I’ve encountered many a thief over the years. Most dramatic was the Mr Men thief, who used to steal a whole shelf of these tiny children’s books every couple of months. One afternoon I emerged from the stockroom to find the shelf newly emptied. ‘The Mr Men thief!’ I called out to my colleague. ‘It must be her!’ he said, pointing to a woman in an unseasonably bulky coat, carrying a sizeable shopping bag, exiting the shop. ‘Stop!’ we shouted, running after her into the street. ‘Stop, thief!’ To our astonishment, she leapt into a waiting getaway car and was off. No doubt Mr Speedy was in the driver’s seat.

I used to wonder what became of these hundreds of Mr Men books: was there a child somewhere demanding a new one each day? Then I happened upon a bookstall at a local street market where a great many were for sale at knockdown prices.

Stealing to sell is one of the most common causes of book theft. A bookseller who worked in Notting Hill told me that the same novels by Gabriel García Márquez, Graham Greene, Haruki Murakami and Ernest Hemingway were always going astray, and the very same titles were being sold — remarkably cheaply — at a stall nearby on Portobello Road. Frustratingly, nothing could be proved… or could it? He decided to make subtle markings on certain pages of the books.