The internet crept up on Maxim Jakubowski like a villain in one of his crime novels. It plunged a knife into the author's famous bookshop, Murder One, inflicting a wound from which the much-loved business would never recover.

Fans of the London shop, which has sold exclusively crime fiction for more than two decades, no longer had to travel to Charing Cross Road to obtain rare backcopies of PD James or Ian Rankin. They turned to Amazon instead, and profits at Murder One dried up. But the bleed-out was slow. It was stymied by the shop's knowledgable staff and their personal relationships with faithful customers. It took four years and a financial crisis for Murder One to gasp its last breath.

Mr Jakubowski, anxious to retire, was negotiating to sell Murder One in September, but Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and the offers dried up. Five months later, he decided to place the store into voluntary liquidation.

“Over the last few years our sales have deterioriated,” Mr Jakubowski said. “I was planning to retire this year, but this is earlier than expected. I would rather close the shop now and go out voluntarily with my head held high and no debts. Once the internet came along, it was a slow and consistent decline for us. After the credit crunch I took a decision - one can't be sentimental about it. It's just a business.” The shop will shut its doors at the end of January, five months short of its 21st birthday. Seven staff will be made redundant.

Thousands of crime aficionados are devastated. On The Bookseller's website, fans from as far afield as Argentina and Alaska have expressed their condolences. “My heart is breaking - this is a travesty,” one wrote. “One of the best bookshops in London, staffed by some of the nicest people.”

Mr Jakubowski opened Murder One in 1988 after becoming “disillusioned” with his publishing career. It quickly became the most respected specialist crime bookshop in the UK. “There's nothing we didn't stock,” he told The Times. “If a book was not available, we would order it.”

From next month, the author, who has published nine crime novels, will focus on his literary career, including an upcoming release of Rome Noir, an anthology of Italian crime fiction, which he edited. He remains literary director of London's Crime Scene festival and reviews crime fiction for national newspapers. But from next month he will no longer run the best crime bookshop in London.