Maybe This Is You

You discovered mystery novels at a young age. You began reading one and you were instantly enthralled.

You gobbled it down in one long fevered gulp …

  and then you went searching for the next.

And now …

Now you’ve had years of reading. You’ve put a lot of time and thought into it. You like to think you know a piece of literature from a handsaw.

You may even have read EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD (looking at you, Clive James).

You have been moved by Suite Francaise and enchanted by the lyricism of Proust and changed forever by the simple profundities of Last Orders . You know how important the next Richard Flanagan is going to be, and you know how enriched you will feel when you’ve read it, and you know it’s unthinkable that you’ve never read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. You’ve got it there, ready to go, on your bedside table, underneath the Stendhal and the James Joyce and the Philip Roth.

 And even though you know

all those treasures await you … even though you know that important literature is, well … important (still you, Clive), when you get home after a long day, you push aside your big pile of Quality Literature, and you dig out …

… a detective story.

Well, guess what?

You are not alone.