Page 106 - Just Deserts
P. 106
Stiff Competition
“Initial sales of the book were brisk, confirming the publisher’s
expectations and the public’s enthusiastic interest in the gimmick. A
week passed without a winner in the contest; then ten days; then two
weeks. And still the book sold in the hundreds of thousands of
copies. A few skeptics began to wonder if any of the books were
printed with the winning message. And then,” she paused for effect,
“disaster struck.”
“This is the emergency clinic in Point Blank, Idaho.” The flashing
red light on a fire department rescue vehicle highlighted the image of
a small-town medical facility. “Here, on a fateful night fifteen days
after ‘Stiff Competition’ went on sale, a homeless person, a drifter
named Thurston Furd, came to the hospital complaining of severe
cramps and difficulty breathing. His blood was tested and found to
contain unusually high levels of arsenic trioxide. Furd’s life was not in
danger, but the personnel began quizzing him to find out where and
how he had been poisoned. He could provide no explanation, but a
copy of the Orpimenter novel was found in his rucksack; the scratch-
off material had been removed, uncovering the winning message—
the first to appear anywhere.”
“The emergency room doctor, realizing the value of the book,
became suspicious. He sent for the police and a forensic specialist.
They wondered if someone else had tried to kill Thurston Furd to
claim the prize money. But the police investigation turned up a quite
different explanation: the book itself was poisoned. Traces of arsenic
were found in the remaining fragments of scratch-off coating. But
hundreds of thousands of people had been scratching off the material
for weeks, with no ill effects. It seemed to be only on Thurston
Furd’s winning copy. And, like the victims in the novel, learning the
secret could have cost him his life.”
The video returned to Ms. Glotz in Manhattan.
“When the news of the near-tragedy came out, there was
pandemonium. Emergency phone lines were jammed with callers
who had just scratched off the coating. Bookstores were forced to
close while ‘Stiff Competition’ was removed from the shelves and all
traces of the promotional displays taken down or destroyed. The next
day, at a hastily-organized press conference, a spokesperson for
LibrAries Press denied that the publishing house had anything to do
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