Free The Bad Book Affair: A Mobile Library Mystery by Ian Sansom Page A

above the van even now, high up on a telephone pole, with Maurice’s face grinning out into the cold wind.
    “Aye, well, he’s entitled, isn’t he? He’s paid for that. The Greens want to get organized themselves, get some billboards up, nothing to stop them.”
    “They probably can’t afford it.”
    “Well, whose fault is that?” said Ted.
    “Anyway,” said Israel, grabbing the leaflets back out of Ted’s hands. “I told him I was going to display his leaflets.”
    “We’re not supposed to,” said Ted.
    “Well, I told him, and I will.”
    “Ach,” said Ted.
    “It’s censorship if we don’t,” said Israel.
    “Censorship!” said Ted. “I don’t know anything about censorship. But I do know that Linda wouldn’t like it.”
    “Well, Linda doesn’t need to know, does she?” said Israel, fanning the leaflets back out on the counter. “How would she find out?”

6
    “H e did what?” said Linda Wei, who was not only Israel’s boss, but also Tumdrum’s only and most prominent lesbian Chinese single mother, and who was currently sipping a large glass of restorative Friday night chardonnay at the bar of the back room of the First and Last. Linda was wearing her habitual heavy makeup and her trademark sunglasses, perched film-starishly high up on her forehead, and she’d pushed the sartorial boat out even further than usual this evening, with a red beret, a voluminous bright purple silk blouse, and a pair of green-and-brown camouflage combat trousers, teamed with blazing pink customized plastic clogs: she looked like she was ready for anything, from the catwalk to the playgroup, to her own show ona shopping channel, to tackling insurgents in the jungles of Belize.
    “Hmm,” said Ron, chairman of the Mobile Library Steering Committee, who was wearing his gray suit and nursing a glass of tap water. “Leaflets.”
    “Is he a total idiot?” said Linda.
    “And what with lending out the Unshelved—” said Ron.
    “But Maurice Morris’s daughter!” exclaimed Linda. “Is he out of his tiny mind! The Unshelved! To Maurice’s daughter!”
    “Aye,” said Ron, who was a man of few and usually rather depressing words. “Alas.”
    “How old is she?”
    “Fourteen.”
    “Fourteen!” said Linda. “God love her. What do they know at fourteen? My eldest’s sixteen, for goodness’ sake, and he’s a wee babby still. Fourteen!”
    “Just turned fourteen,” said Ron. “Closer to thirteen, actually.”
    “Oh! What’s she been borrowing?”
    “I don’t know. I would think the usual suspects,” said Ron meditatively.
    “ Lolita ,” said Linda, with disgust. “I bet. Slaughterhouse-Five .”
    “ Wuthering Heights ,” said Ron. “Very strange.”
    “ Wuthering Heights ! That’s not Unshelved,” said Linda.
    “We read it at school,” said Ron. “I found it very strange.”
    “ American Psycho ,” said Linda. “That’s what we’re talking about here, Ron. Filth.”
    “ Sex and the City ,” said Ron.
    “That’s a TV program,” said Linda.
    “But I suppose girls mature more quickly…”
    “Have you ever read American Psycho ?” said Linda.
    “I’m more of a Patrick O’Brian man myself,” said Ron.
    “You could live till a hundred and twenty and still not be old enough to read that sort of filth!” said Linda. And then, “Filth!” she repeated, for good measure.
    “Patrick O’Brian?” said Ron. “Aubrey and Maturin? There’s nothing wrong with them, so there’s not.”
    “No! American Psycho, ” said Linda. “That sort of stuff. Denigrating to women.”
    “Bad books,” said Ron.
    “Exactly!” said Linda, adjusting the angle of her beret. “ Bad books . Have you any idea how damaging this is to our reputation as a responsible library service? When I get a hold of that idiot I am going to…”
    Israel, who had no idea that Linda was on the bad books warpath, waved to her from his table on the other side of the room, and was about to call out in greeting