The Shunned House: Inside One of the Largest Book Thefts in History
Halloween Edition of Dispatches from the Rare Book Trade
In July 2023, one of the great book collectors in America, James Strand, dropped dead in his kitchen. He lived alone in Portland, Oregon, estranged from his family, and in only sporadic email contact with a former co-worker and a handful of booksellers. No one missed him until a gang of house breakers and drug addicts started selling his books all over town.
Thieves took Strand’s handwritten manuscript of The Shunned House, the first book by the godfather of American horror H. P. Lovecraft. They also took the hand-corrected typescript of that novella and one of just eight copies of the first edition bound during the author’s lifetime.1
Strand’s manuscript of Stephen King’s story, “The Raft” disappeared from his home, along with a first edition of Ray Bradbury’s book, Dark Carnival, inscribed by King to his literary agent, and the only known copy of a rare variant proof of King’s first novel, Carrie.
More than one hundred Golden Age comic books formerly belonging to Edgar Church, the most famous comic collector, also vanished onto the streets of Portland. One of them, the final installment of Weird Comics, from 1942, survives in just twelve recorded copies. A comic book auctioneer estimated its value at “50k to 60k conservatively, with it possibly reaching six figures” at auction.2
Only a couple of comic book dealers and booksellers in Portland had heard of James Strand before he died. Most everyone who was offered parts of his collection learned it right away. The thieves left the receipts with the books to prove how valuable they were.
Strand was already a serious collector by 1955, when he helped compile a Talbot Mundy bibliography. He was 20 years old then, the son of a Linotype mechanic and a librarian. After he died, one of Strand’s main sources for books, the science fiction dealer Lloyd Currey, told the Oregonian newspaper,
Strand’s collection is probably the finest ever put together of science fiction and fantasy dealing with Lovecraft, Arkham House, and the Arkham House writers. I can’t even think of an institution with a better collection.3
Currey still spoke of Strand’s collection in the present tense, as if it still existed. It didn’t. In a few days thieves destroyed a private library that took seven decades of careful curation to build.
I maintain a list of items known to be stolen. Please keep a lookout for them.
I belonged to the group that didn’t know James Strand, but from the glimpses I got from the fences selling his books, I immediately recognized that he had an extraordinary collection. I wondered what was going on. Why were dealers all over Portland were seeing some of the best material of their careers in the hands of hustlers, not bibliophiles or grieving spouses?
In the coming months, I’m going to tell you James Strand’s story—how he built such an amazing collection while working a regular job at a newspaper, how his books were stolen, and what happened after.
[I previously wrote about my experience with book theft, which set the stage for the James Strand story.]
Summers in Portland are warm but not often truly hot. Like most homes in the city, James Strand’s did not have air conditioning. Unlike most homeowners, he had sealed the inside of some of his windows with black plastic to keep out the sun. Light, next to water and bugs, is the most damaging threat facing books.
On July 6, 2023, the last day Strand is known to have been alive, it was 87° in Portland. Inside his house, it was stifling, but he was accustomed to it. Still, he was approaching ninety, and the heat probably did him in. His official cause of death was dehydration.4
Strand lived in a dilapidated 1920s four-room bungalow, painted white. It’s in the southeast quadrant of Portland in an old neighborhood called Lents, which its more cynical residents call Felony Flats. On Nextdoor, the neighborhood social media site, the Lents feed is dominated by video footage of strangers jiggling doorknobs and stealing deliveries. This is where Strand decided to keep one of the most important book collections in the city, stuffed with unique material no one else had.
On Strand’s block of SE Woodstock Boulevard, the lot to the left (where his grandparents’ house once stood) recently sprouted a stylish three-story apartment building, part of the never-ending effort to gentrify Lents. On the other side is a shabby complex of small apartments.
One day when I was in the neighborhood, a twenty-year-old tan sedan pulled into the complex’s empty parking lot. Two men got out and began shifting what looked to be sealed product boxes from the car to a ground-floor unit.
As a bookseller used to loading and unloading, my instant reaction was that they had chosen a very inefficient way to park. The car trunk pointed away from the apartment door, and the angle of the vehicle forced them to walk around it with each load. For criminals, I thought, they aren’t very smart. Unloading took twice as long as it should have, and they were fully exposed to the street in the unlucky event that a Portland Police Bureau squad car drove by.
One of the morals of this story will be that criminals aren’t very smart, or perhaps more accurately, they aren’t very concerned about getting caught. And as professional outlaws, they enjoy breaking rules. Why park between the lines if you can leave your car in the middle of the lot, as if you own the place?
For weeks, Strand’s remains festered. Hot summer air does not favor corpses.5 Eventually a group of kids noticed a swarm of flies in the front yard and a passing woman called 9-1-1. County employees came and removed the body. After they wheeled Strand out, one of them screwed in a latch and a padlock to secure the front door.6
The next day, a medical examiner called Strand’s closest relative, his niece Susie. She hadn’t seen her uncle in fifteen years, although they both lived in Portland. The M.E. informed Susie that James Strand had died; no one knew exactly when. Strand’s death certificate says he was “found dead months after passing,” but that’s an exaggeration. Officially, James Strand died on August 3, when his body was discovered, one day shy of his 88th birthday.7
Susie’s father had just died, too, and she and her partner, Katie, were in Montana for the services. They returned to Portland a week later and went to Uncle Jim’s house on their way home from the airport. Someone had smashed through the front door, and inside, the place was a mess. Katie went home to get supplies and power tools. Susie called the non-emergency line of the Portland Police Bureau and sat on hold for three hours. A dispatcher finally answered and promised to send a patrol car, as soon as one was available.8
Susie expected the kind of police response seen on TV shows, so she and Katie stayed out of the house to preserve the evidence. They weren’t keen to go inside anyway. The house was creepy, with its plastic-covered windows and papers strewn all over, and there was an accursed smell everywhere.9
Eventually, weary from travel and eight hours sitting outside all through the August afternoon, they gave up. Katie screwed plywood sheets over the front and back doors, and she and Susie left. According to the phone log, the police answered Susie’s call at 12:23 p.m. After she was finally home an officer phoned at 8:12 p.m. to take a theft report. Twenty-nine minutes and fifty-four seconds later, the case was marked “inactive / suspended” for “lack of tangible leads.”10 The Portland police never did investigate what was the second largest property crime in the city in 2023.11
That first day, in her brief time inside the house, Susie noticed that some of the bookshelves were empty. She wondered what could possibly be worth stealing from that dump of a house.
No one knew what Strand had inside. Many of the dealers he patronized were long dead. The handful of booksellers and auction houses he continued to buy from knew only what they had sold. A few acquaintances who collected similar things heard details here and there, but Strand wasn’t much of a talker. The full scope of his collection was a secret that died with him. His niece, who would have inherited everything, didn’t know that he collected at all.
The burglary of that small house in Lents was one of the largest single book thefts in American history. The value of the stolen books was at least $2 million and was probably more.12
Once I understood that Portland was ground zero for such a staggering book crime, I enlisted the help of other quirky, eccentric, and independent booksellers in Portland to solve the mystery of James Strand’s stolen library. Working together, we helped agents from the FBI’s art crime team and the organized crime task force arrest some of the crooks and recover hundreds of books, perhaps a quarter of his library. The search for missing items continues.
In my marketing materials, I used to call myself a book detective with the tag line, “every book holds a clue.” I never imagined that would become literally true.
—Scott Brown, Downtown Brown Books
Those three items alone are likely worth several hundred thousand dollars.
Estimate provided by Heritage Auctions in 2023.
Quoted from “A small kindness in a multi-million dollar Portland book theft” by Steve Duin, May 10, 2025.
July 6, 2023: This is the date of the last check Strand wrote. Temperature: Weather Underground, Lents station [Archive.org]. Official cause of death: Death certificate.
A line from Lovecraft’s story, “Herbert West—Reanimator.”
Swarm of flies: Portland 9-1-1 call PP23-203487. County employees…latch and a padlock: Interview with Susie (niece) and Katie (partner).
Medical examiner called: Interview with Susie (niece). Hadn’t seen her uncle: Interview with Susie. She last saw her uncle at the hospital when his mother was dying in 2007.
Returned to Portland: Interview with Susie and Katie on August 9, 2025. Promised to send a patrol car: “I’ll put you in line for an officer…” Portland dispatch call C402260_01_PP23-210588.
Interview with Susie and Katie on August 9, 2025; Portland dispatch call C402260_01_PP23-210588. Accursed smell… quoted from H. P. Lovecraft, “The Outsider.”
They gave up: August 9 interview. Times: PPB VCAD printout C398050_00_PP23-210588.
I’ve met the victim of the largest property crime of 2023, my neighbor, Win McCormack. His chauffeur embezzled $34 million over several years. Apparently, McCormack never looked at the transportation charges on his credit card statements and had the account set up on autopay. It’s not clear if the Portland Police Bureau participated in this investigation either. The chauffeur and his wife were prosecuted by federal authorities.
Largest single book theft: Most large book thefts happen over long periods of time (Carnegie Library; James Gilkey; Daniel Spiegelman, European Russian books). The only large theft from a single source I am aware of was the £2.5 million theft of rare books from a London warehouse in 2017. At least $2 million: The value of the books recovered is close to $1 million; the value of the items known to be in Strand’s library that are missing is $1 million, or more. The value of the items missing but for which no records survive is unknown.
This is fascinating and so deeply sad: it genuinely feels like a Stephen King story.
Good, useful and entertaining information.
Thanks,
David Warner Nov. 11, 2025