Hamptons Police Seek Missing Romance Novels
In an attempt to replicate the excitement generated by a successful and well-attended book brigade event in a neighboring East End village, the East End Jarvis Hoover Memorial Regional Library in Napeague attempted their own book brigade this past Saturday. Unfortunately, the Napeague event was marred by poor attendance, sloppy organization, and the theft of numerous library-owned materials.
By Saturday afternoon, the Hamptons Police had been summoned to investigate the disappearance of a large cache of trashy romance novels.
“We thought we would invite patrons to help us load our popular beach bookmobile with sizzling summer books,” said Nina Crawford, head librarian. “We asked our patrons to start at the library door and form a line across the beautiful, windswept dunes until they reached the bookmobile.”
Whether due to inadequate publicity or general lack of interest, too few patrons attended the event to form an actual line, which meant that instead of an orderly handing-off of books along a human chain, patrons were lugging books across broad expanses of hot sand under a blistering sun to pass them to the next patron.
“It would appear that at some point people just gave up,” said Hamptons Police spokesman Larry Hirsch. “They just started dropping the books in the sand and running off to cool themselves off in the water.”
Later, library officials discovered that a person or persons unknown had made off with the abandoned books.
“We’re missing several titles by Lindsay Sands, a bunch of Danielle Steele’s books, and our complete set of Nora Roberts,” Crawford announced. “If we don’t get these books back, it will be a very long August for some of our readers.”
The Hamptons Police currently have no leads as to the books’ whereabouts.