any means. By noon today, in fact, my struggle will be over. Please take care of my seven hundred and nineteen pages. Each one breathes through my blood. They are all I can bequeath to mankind... Dr Patience picked up the telephone. 'Hello? Is that the Duty Librarian? Good. Principal here. Look, I've taken receipt of a by-the-time-you-read-this-I'll-be-dead letter, with the author's manuscript apparently on its way under separate cover. The author's name is... Wyfield B. Twyfield. Could I ask you to make sure that the letter is filed with the book when it arrives as per usual, and maybe check with the local authorities as per the address that he really has done the job? I am always reluctant to take one of these sacrifices at face value without police confirmation, since it's unbelievably annoying if we've already gone through registration and one of them comes back to life.' (pages 17-18) I don't read many books that depend on humour and a sense of the absurd but this was well worth taking a gamble on. It manages to perfectly capture scenes of eccentric bureaucracy and bizarre but loveable librarians trying to keep out the readers, protect their collection and deal with those who might have manuscripts that fit the library's rules -- the gentleman who has been writing radio plays for decades without ever having one accepted and finally decides to concede defeat, for example. There are nefarious plots by those who want to exploit unpublished children's fiction, not-so-friendly