“It was a stupid mistake to make,” said the American woman I had met at my hotel in the English lake country, “but it was on the counter with the other Penguin books – the little sixpenny ones, you know; with the paper covers – and I supposed of course it was a detective story All the others were detective stories.”

Believe it or not, but the lines above have been haunting me for something like 35 years.

I read them – and the story they belong to – when I was around 12, as I browsed my school anthology trying to keep boredom at bay… why?
I can’t remember.

I just remember I was bored out of my mind, I reading in class, and I chanced upon a story in my reading anthology, and I read it. Continue reading →