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By Wrapping Paper of St. Paul, Minnesota! Thanks, Tim!

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Move Over, Father Dowling.

Someone is unloading an assload of mystery novels. But not just your standard workaday mystery novels! No, sir...they are, in fact. . .


. . .the Best Mysteries of All Time!


The book Above Suspicion bears the Best Mysteries moniker, and was written by Helen MacInnes in 1939. It is not to be confused with the movie of the same name, in which Christopher Reeves played a paralyzed cop. Oddly, that movie hit theaters six days before his infamous horse-riding accident. Coincidence. . .or one of the Best Mysteries of All Time? YOU decide.

Also bearing the mysterious seal of approval:


. . .A novel entitled Friday the Rabbi Slept Late.

Apparently this is the first in a series of Rabbi Mystery novels...the titles of which seem to beg for you to grab a child's toes as you rattle them off:

Saturday, The Rabbi Went Hungry.
Sunday, The Rabbi Stayed Home.
Monday, The Rabbi Took Off.

Tuesday, The Rabbi Saw Red.

Wednesday, The Rabbi Got Wet.

Thursday, The Rabbi Walked Out.
Next Friday, The Rabbi Went Wee-Wee-Wee-Wee All The Way Home!

Ok, I made that last one up, but the rest are real. It seems as though the Rabbi is getting crankier as the week goes on, and the rest of the books in the series indicate that things don't get easier for our Holy Detective Hero.

Having run out of weekdays, the Rabbi looks to the future and considers retirement in Someday, The Rabbi Will Leave. Yet another novel finds the good Rabbi swapping religious beliefs in a Freaky-Friday style romp with a Catholic Priest in One Fine Day, The Rabbi Bought a Cross.

The Final Pair of Rabbi books: The Day the Rabbi Resigned and The Day the Rabbi Left Town, indicate that being a Detective Rabbi isn't all its cracked up to be. No word on whether any of these titles made the Best Mysteries of All Time list.

The other books on the NeighborGoodies table don't bear the Best Mysteries Seal of approval and, therefore, are clearly inferior:

Patricia Cornwell's At Risk, which sounds like a Lifetime TV Movie. And. . .

. . .a collection of "Four Exciting Mysteries!" Two of which sound like they are porn. (I'll let you decide which ones.)

Also on the table is this. . .


At first, I thought it was a reading lamp. I wondered if one of my Neighbors had given up literacy altogether by surrendering both books and bedtime lighting to the Table. But then I realized that while this may look like a lamp, there is no electrical cord attached. Also...that thing on top isn't even a light bulb. It's just...a thing. So what could this object be? Some sort of solar powered enigma? A device from another planet? A Murder Weapon??

This, too, was shaping up to be one of the Best Mysteries of All Time! Using my own sleuthing techniques (proudly learned from growing up watching Scooby Doo) I found this tag on the bottom of the object:
This labels calls it "Crackled Glass" and judging from the crossed-out price, I'm guessing this was given as a gift to one of the NeighborGooders. I deduce that the object didn't ever make it to the recipient's apartment. We can also assume that whoever the Gifter was, is probably not welcome into the Giftee's home anymore. Really, the only unsolved mystery here is: Why the crap anyone would buy this thing in the first place? Especially as a present.





2 comments:

Kate said...

Okay, that's a whole pile of literary trash. Strangely, I have heard of the author of the first book. I got sucked into watching one of the longest, most confusing spy movies in the history of time.

Is the weird object some kind of thing that you mount to the wall like some kind of bizarro hat rack?

Anonymous said...

the "cracked glass" looks like a fancy toilet paper holder! like something you would see on a Kohler commercial.