A History of Mystery

For lovers of books, intrigue and cats, the best destination in Westerville is easy to deduce.

Foul Play, 27 E. College Ave., is Westerville’s own mystery novel-exclusive bookstore.

The darkly painted walls are lined with wooden bookshelves made by store owners Toni and John Cross. No matter which way you turn, you can find some of the 30,000 mystery books the Crosses have hunted down over the years for the benefit of their large volume of devoted customers and fellow mystery lovers.

The Crosses’ goal is to give people like them, who love reading and mysteries, a place to escape and to discuss the books they love.

Every second Wednesday of the month, the Crosses host a mystery book club. “Everyone is welcome,” says John, “and usually after our scheduled discussion, we all go out and have dinner and the book discussion continues.”

But why mystery novels?

“Well, it’s a lot less dangerous than my old job,” says John, a former nuclear power plant worker.

“We used to have to fly to places like Toronto, L.A. and

New York City to find our books. It was so hard to find books in Ohio,” he says. “There weren’t any Barnes and Nobles or Borders back then.”

To that end, the Crosses started their own bookstore and used it to import books to Ohio from all over.

There’s more to Foul Play than just mystery, though.

The history of the old house in which the bookstore is located lends to its spooky atmosphere. The Victorian brick house was built in the 1880s, and the Crosses – who live on the second floor, with the bookstore on the first – have worked very hard to keep its integrity intact without sacrificing safety and functionality.

The floors and the chandeliers are all original, and the woodwork has been kept intact as well to preserve the graffiti left there by members of the National Guard who were stationed in the house in the 1920s, when it was a Guard armory. But some changes needed to be made – for instance,

Couple’s haunted house hosts multitude of mystery novels – and cats

the heating system, which originally consisted of holes in the first-floor ceiling that allowed heat to rise to the second floor.

“The house is haunted, of course,” says John.

He has never seen a ghost in person, but he has seen signs of haunting, he says. Once, when a contractor was working on the house, the old 1930s phone in the back of the shop rang, and a woman named Susan was on the other line, asking for someone who didn’t live there anymore. When John came back, the contractor told him a woman named Susan had called – despite the fact, John realized, that the old phone was not connected to the phone wires.

Further setting itself apart from the average bookstore, Foul Play is also home to three cats who keep customers company. The Crosses’ feline roommates –Harriet, Fannie May and Desiree – live comfortably downstairs.

“There only have been a few problems with people being allergic to them,” says John, “but it is common knowledge that they are here.”

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Each cat has its own distinct personality and interacts with guests differently. Harriet likes to pull books off the shelves, Fannie May likes to lie around and sleep, and Desiree is shy and seldom comes down from the second floor.

The store’s feline fancy is not limited to the real kind – the Crosses also draw in cat lovers with their large selection of cat knickknacks. They travel to cat shows and look in catalogues in search of anything cat-related they can sell in their shop.

“There used to be a lot of cat shows in Ohio, but ever since the gas prices rose, the shows have stopped or it’s harder to go out to them and look at what the vendors have,” says John.

Still, the collection remains impressive – cat plates, cat figurines, cat watches, cat stuffed animals and cat T-shirts.

For more information on Foul Play, visit www.foulplaybooks.com.

Devan Toncler is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at gbishop@pubgroupltd.com.