Once Upon a Crime, the little mystery bookstore with a national reputation, has been sold to Dennis Abraham and Meg King-Abraham. Current owners Pat Frovarp and Gary Shulze will transfer ownership on April 1.

Abraham and King-Abraham, avid mystery readers, will be the fourth owners of the bookstore, located at 604 26th St. W. in Minneapolis. They will take possession on the store’s 29th anniversary.

“We naturally have mixed emotions,” Shulze said in an email announcement. “We’ll miss the store, but plan to be there on a regular basis for several months for training purposes. Just thinking about all the details and book-selling wisdom we need to provide and impart makes our heads spin. How did we do this for nearly 13 years?”

Abraham and King-Abraham moved to Minneapolis in 2014 and Once Upon a Crime was recommended to them by friends. When they learned the store was for sale they wanted to become small-business owners because of their love of books. Abraham is an operations manager at Medtronic and his wife teaches elementary technology in St. Paul. Devin Abraham, their daughter, will be the primary staff. A University of Wisconsin graduate, she is also a voracious reader.

Frovarp and Shulze bought Once Upon a Crime in 2002 and were married in the store five years later. They have built the 800-square-foot business into an award-winning store that has hosted most Minnesota crime/mystery writers as well as some who are internationally known. They announced the store was for sale last July, when they decided they needed to concentrate on Shulze’s treatments for cancer and because they are at the age when they were ready to step back from the all-consuming roles of independent bookstore owners.