Ezra, the new (or soon to be new) owner of the Community Bookstore wrote in with news: “and we don’t mean the arrival of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay or Wolf Hall in paperback (though they have perked things up considerably in a month to which, usually, the adjective torpid barely does justice). No, we’re referring to the return of the mystery swap, a bookstore institution whose abrupt disappearance several months ago left Slope sleuths scratching their heads…

“The solution, as in the best mysteries, was deceptively simple; as a clue, we’ll merely say spring cleaning got a bit out of hand.  (Forty  years ago, speaking for the older members of the staff, we would have skipped the cleaning and gone to Ft. Lauderdale, but one finds one’s fun where one can these days). Swap rules are simple: exchange one pre-read mystery for another and give us a dollar for each book swapped. Because we cleaned out most of our old stock we’re down to not much, so we will find some appropriate way to recompense anyone who brings in bagd of mysteries to replenish our shelves.

“Speaking of Ft. Lauderdale, that cultural reference may be lost on most of you who tweet, but we’d like you to become followers of “CommunityBkstr” all the same. We’ll be tweeting about such things as hot new books, coming events and the rediscovery of forgotten gems–not unlike our risen-from-the-dead mystery swap.”