Literary Chance

If you are like me, your list of books to read grows by the pound with each passing day. I gather titles like a bee gathers pollen in seemingly random patterns as I move about my day. But like bees, my randomness is more programmatic than chaotic as I tend to gravitate to the usual sources for interesting titles – general news and reviews, word of mouth from friends, and the bookshelf from favorite book shops, among others. Every once in a while though, I find my choice of book almost by chance. In one instance I found a dog-eared trade paperback left at a coffee house that I frequent. It was old, and a first glance at the title suggested a work from the all-too-common hard-boiled detective genre. I found the copper-foiled embossing on the title art over the top but compelling enough that …