On the Trail of the Perfect Mystery in Princeton

For anyone who loves reading mysteries, walking into the Cloak & Dagger Bookstore on Princeton’s Nassau Street is like walking into a magical world of treasures that promises hours of intrigue and delight.

The exterior of the store, located at the corner of North Harrison Street, looks like the kind of place that would tempt Sherlock Holmes to investigate its contents more deeply.

Inside, it is bright and cheerfully lit, with books neatly stacked from floor to ceiling that capture the eye first with their colors, and then draw in the reader with their juicy titles and authors: classic mystery authors like Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and newer favorites like Elizabeth George and Tami Hoag.

There’s a whole series of spy thrillers about the Cold War, international intrigue, the CIA, and the political history of Eastern Europe. Think writers like John le Carre and Olen Steinhauer, who wrote The Tourist, a New York Times best seller.

The Cloak & Dagger, billed as “a Shop for the Mystery Genre”, will mark its 10^th anniversary in October. It is the bailiwick of Jerry and Aline Lenaz, long-time Princeton residents, business partners and now married 44 years.

“When I first met Aline she always had her nose in a book,” recalled Jerry Lenaz. “She’s a mystery buff and it was always her dream to open a mystery book store.”  

They met at the Pratt Institute in New York where they were both doing graduate work. She was a project manager for more than 20 years at Princeton University and he became an architect planner.  When she retired and he went into semi-retirement, they decided it was time to turn their dreams into reality. They opened Cloak & Dagger in 2001.

“It’s a new adventure every day,” said Jerry Lenaz. “People ask for obscure books and when we have it, their eyes light up and we feel like we’ve done a great thing for them.”

The Cloak & Dagger is open for thrills year round and also does a big summertime business with tourists who come to Princeton to visit friends and relatives and are drawn to the shop. There are people who like the private eye, hard-boiled detective genre, like the works of Dashiell Hammett. Lenaz carries a large selection of authors from the late 30s and 40s, what he calls the golden age of mysteries.

 “There are the cozy, polite murders and the stories that are set in the English countryside and those that keep you guessing until the very end and then turn the tables on you.”

He also carries a large stock of international mysteries, “for people who like to take trips in their armchair, for example, detective novelist Donna Leon, whose stories are set in Venice with protagonist Guido Brunetti.”  

There are mysteries for the younger set, including the popular books by R.L. Stine and classics like the Encyclopedia Brown series that have been loved by generations. He also offers the Hardy boy books and the Nancy Drew series as well as authors who write about the young Sherlock Holmes. 

Lenaz believes small, independent book stories like his take on the personality of the community. “Our titles change based on what people are reading,” he said. “Our market base is in a 10 to 50 mile radius but we get people from even farther who come here directly because they can’t find what they want in the big-box stores. The major stores have to sell so many books for each linear foot of shelf, so you get very few of the classics.”

The Cloak & Dagger has made its mark as a destination book store over the last ten years, drawing dogged mystery lovers who are just as persistent in their quest to find the perfect book as the heroes of their books are in finding out “whodunit”.

“You spend all this time finding the perfect treasures,” said Lenaz. “And when we can help our readers find the perfect book and they’re happy, it makes us happy.”