DELRAY BEACH, Fla.— Of all the ways Joanne Sinchuk thought her indie mystery bookstore would meet its untimely death in Delray Beach, she never imagined this literary killer: COVID-19.
Murder on the Beach, a treasured book nook since 1996 that catered to local sleuths and lovers of whodunits, crime and the corrupt underbelly of the Sunshine State, will permanently close on April 15.
The shop announced its demise on social media last week, after trying for two years to fend off a main antagonist: the persistent pandemic that kept readers at home and out of Sinchuk’s bookstore.
Murder on the Beach had survived recessions and outlasted internet titans like Amazon — the toppler of so many bygone indie bookstores — but a global virus doing them in?
“It’s certainly a major blow to us, us ending like this,” Sinchuk tells the Sun Sentinel. “We knew we weren’t making any money. We knew business was bad. But we thought we could wait out the pandemic, and then people would come back.”
But Murder on the Beach couldn’t hold out long enough.
Two straight years of Zoom-only author events — which at times drew five attendees — hurt the bookstore’s revenue streams, Sinchuk says. Murder on the Beach relied on in-person book signings, which pulled in pre-dinner foot traffic. Even the signed author copies that remained unbought at the end of the night could be resold online at higher value.
“All those things went out the window,” explains Sinchuk, who still hasn’t broken the news to the 4,000 subscribers of her bookstore’s email newsletter. “We did plenty of stuff over Zoom, but nobody bought books, so we were just providing free entertainment.”
In 2002, when the store moved from its original home in Sunny Isles Beach — where it opened in 1996 — to Pineapple Grove, hordes of loyal customers followed. Sinchuk eventually sold the bookstore in 2008 to David Wulf, owner of Booksmart in Boca Raton, Florida. In 2018, travel site Atlas Obscura declared it one of the World’s Best Independent Bookstores.
The M.O. was similar, but the scene of the crime changed when Murder on the Beach moved to its current Atlantic Avenue home in 2019, less than a year before the literary minded began to quarantine at home.
Their perch on touristy Atlantic Avenue courted voracious gumshoes seeking thrillers, detective potboilers and modern suspense, often from its vast selection of Florida authors. Inside the sunlit shop, kitschy-ghoulish décor filled long hallways of books: police caution tape slanted across shelves, a skeleton with glasses curled up in an armchair with a novel, “Vampire’s Blood” soap in the bathrooms.
James Patterson and Carl Hiaasen, Randy Wayne White and Michael Connelly, Stuart Woods and Tim Dorsey and other nationally touring mystery-thriller-crime authors drew customers to what Sinchuk calls her “destination bookstore.”
“It was more than just a bookstore – it was a place to socialize, to put on costumes for Halloween, to meet authors we know locally and nationally,” says author Charles Todd, of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, who with his late mother, Caroline, has written 40 mystery novels.
Writing under their shared pen name Charles Todd, Todd and his mother visited the bookstore for 15 years, joining Sinchuk for mystery writer conferences like Sleuthfest. He last visited the bookstore on Feb. 3 to promote “A Game of Fear,” the latest in his Inspector Ian Rutledge saga.
“It’s sad, because there are so few bookstores, let alone indie mystery booksellers,” he says. “And it’s especially sad when it’s a place dear to my heart.”
Author Alan S. Orloff, of Boca Raton, says Sinchuk and her longtime employees, Cheryl Kravetz and Stacey Schwartz, championed local authors, giving them fresh exposure at national conferences.
In a world of Barnes & Nobles, Murder on the Beach stood as a novelty, he says.
“Barnes & Noble didn’t have time for what we call the ‘mid-listers,’ the smaller names,” says Orloff, an award-winning writer and president of the Mystery Writers of America Florida Chapter. “But Joanne supported the whole gamut of crime fiction writers.”
“This bookstore going out of business is going to leave a gaping hole in the mystery writing community,” he says.
For now, it will be business as usual at Murder on the Beach, Sinchuk says. Next, author David Putnam will appear in store — and on Zoom — to discuss his novel “The Sinister” at 7 p.m. Eastern March 11.
Murder on the Beach bookstore, at 104 W. Atlantic Ave., in Delray Beach, Florida, will permanently close on April 15. Call 561-279-7790 or go to MurderontheBeach.com.
