When Police Chief William Schmidt called Detective Philly Giordano into his office, the air was thick with an urgency that Giordano had not felt in years. "Philly, we've got a murder case unlike any other. Storytelling! It’s been slain!”
“That’s horrible, Chief!" Who did it?”
“We don’t know. No witnesses, no nothing. Books abandoned by the tens of thousands, strewn all over the city - nothing but blank pages. Brutal.”
“I could have never imagined something like this, Chief!”
“That’s just it, no one could. I called every bookstore in Manhattan, no one’s talking. Word on the street is that the New York Public Library might close up shop altogether. Now, I know you’re a reader and all that.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ve done my share of reading.”
“Me, I haven’t read a story since I was knee-high to a fire plug! But you, you got all that college behind you! That’s why you’re the man for the job. Seriously, Philly, when you think of all the children in New York, who’s gonna tell them a story now?”
“Breaks your heart. Who’ll even take a book to the park on a sunny day anymore?”
“And the housewives and their romance novels - gone!”
“And you know how strap-hangers love a good mystery on their way to work in the morning, right?”
“And what about the beatniks and their er …?”
“Jack Kerouac?”
“Right. And that exit-thing!”
“Existentialism.”
“See, you know all this! That’s why I want you to find out who did this! Who killed storytelling?"
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