If you are going to own only one book on mass spectrometry, I would suggest
Introduction to Mass Spectrometry: Instrumentation, Applications, and Strategies for Data Interpretation, 4th Ed.; J. Throck Watson and O. David Sparkman., Wiley, Chichester, U.K., 2007, ISBN 978-0470-51634-8. You may think that I am saying this because I am one of the authors. That is partly true, but Jack and I wrote this book to be just that: the one and only book to have you will have just one. The book has about 900 pages and well over 3,000 citation, most of which are less than five years old.
Another book that I think you should have, also authored my me, is
Mass Spectrometry Desk Reference, 2nd Ed., Global View Publishing, Pittsburgh, Pa, 2006, ISBM: 978-0-9660913-2-9. This book has a list of correct and incorrect terms used in mass spectrometry and a number of good explanations of these terms as well as an extensive bibliography of mass spectrometry books dating back to 1903.
A book a lot of people doing LC/MS have found to be very beneficial is
A Global View of LC/MS, 2nd Ed. Ross Willoughby, Ed Sheehan, Sam Mitrovich, Global View Publishing, Pittsburgh, Pa, 2005, ISBM: 978-0-9660813-5-8.
There are also books you want to avoid at any cost. One of the these is
LC/MS: A Practical User’s Guide Marvin C. McMaster, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ 2005, ISBN 978-0-471-65531-7. This guy has published a series of these
A Practical User’s Guide books, all just as bad as this one. One is on liquid chromatography and another is on GC/MS. Believe it or not, a second edition of the GC/MS book is due out this year. With the
Practical User’s Guide title, these books will sell one to two thousand copies, and that, apparently, is all that the publisher cares about. I, and several others, wrote a review of GC/MS saying that it was probably the worst book every written on the subject. The book was filled with incorrect information which if followed could result in damage to instrumentation. I concluded my review with "... the only good thing that can be said about this book is that it is a testament to the fact the First Amendment to the United States Constitution is alive and well." (
J Am. Soc. Mass Spectrom.,
10(4), 364–367,
1999).
It is surprising in some respect as to how few books on LC/MS have been written. There was a good edited book by Cole on Electrospray in 1997, but that is now rather dated (Wiley ISBN: 978-0-471-14564-5). For its time (1992), there was a very good book by W. M. A. Niessen and J, van der Greef,
Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (Marcel Dekker ISBN: 0-8247-8635-1). However, I cannot recommend the two subsequent editions authored only by Niessen. Mike Gross edited a book in 1992 which was the proceeding of a NATO ASI Conference held in 1990:
Mass Spectrometry in the Biological Sciences: A Tutorial (Kluwer, ISBN; 0-7923-1539-1). This too was an excellent book for its time and still contains useful information.
Volume 193 of Methods in Enzymology: Mass Spectrometry, edited by James A. McCloskey (1990, Academic Press (ISBN:0-12-182094-7). Al of these older books have useful information on mobile phase chemistry which makes them worthwhile today.
You have to remember, that LC/MS really did not take off until the 1990s. The quintessential book has yet to be written; therefore to answer your question, "Who are the "Kirklands/Snyders'" of the LC-MS world?" I would have to say for now, "No one."
Good luck in your new venture.