DEPARTMENT OF IRONY: The name of the book I found it in? End of the Line.
The second card turned up while I was reading The Medbury Fort Murder I apparently bought this book from a local seller though I can't remember who. The business card comes from a Quincy, IL stove salesman. I loved what I read when I turned it over. Such an odd book for someone to give as a present. Guess this gift giving father never bothered to read what the book is about and figured, "Another mystery for my detective fiction obsessed son. He'll love it, I'm sure." But more odd is the fact that Dad uses his business cards as gift tags. Frugal or self-absorbed? I'm guessing it's the father who is J. W. Egan. It would be even more odd if it turned out that Dad just pulled any scrap of paper of out of his wallet or off his desk, scrawled his birthday greeting on it, then suck it in the book.
John, I liked "the good life" business card you found in "End of the Line." The closest I have come to finding something interesting is a picture of a Hindu deity, a pocket card-calendar, a flattened leaf, and a business card belonging to a merchant navy officer in British Columbia.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see that merchant navy officer's card. Pressed flowers turn up a lot. Often they leave stains on the pages. I throw them out. Not really worth taking photos of ancient crumbling flowers.
ReplyDeleteI collect old cookbooks, which often have insertions, usually recipes torn from magazines etc. But I've also had original Ministry of Food leaflets from WW 2; a letter to a little girl telling her to be good with her new Mummy and Daddy; and a recipe clipping from a Johannesburg newspaper which gave that week's curfew times on the back. I always leave them in place; I feel they're part of the book's history.
ReplyDeleteI love finding things in books I pick up. My favorite found item is still this one Bev's Believe It or Not.
ReplyDeleteBev’s find of a letter from a soldier during WW2 was something called V-Mail. You can see blank forms if you Google it. In the letter, the Army censors struck out the name of a place, so that his group could not be tracked.
DeleteI suspect that in any of the crime books I've read in the last 5 years all you are likely to find are scraps of paper on which i made my blog notes!
ReplyDeleteI think you need to write a novel around that first mysterious card, John. Who, what, where and why. :)
ReplyDeleteThe most haunting thing I ever found in a book was a small photo of a nude woman in longshot--way too small an image to be erotic: the figure was about three-eighths of an inch high. She standing by the side of a heated swimming pool at night with the pool light bathing the pool in an aqua glow. The temperature differential between water and air was making steam rise from the pool.
ReplyDeleteI've lived in L.A. all my life and the photo was clearly taken looking south in the Hills above Bel Air or Beverly Hills.
I carefully put the photo away and have of course lost it. But I've never forgotten it.