You’ve gone away for the weekend. You’re a tourist, on vacation. You’re wandering around, eating fudge and salt-water taffy, looking at the historic buildings, trying to decide if the shape in the water is a seal or a rock. When you get back to your hotel, you look up the local used bookstore. “Let’s stop by, before we go kayaking,” you might say to your companion. This is why:

And reasonably priced too! Sure, I have other copies, and I’m not a big fan of Rosamond Du Jardin’s Toby Heydon series (the coy, first-person, faux teenager voice grates on me) although Du Jardin’s mastery of the bland exerts a certain fascination, but that cover! What’s not to like? The bolero with the white collar and piping, the plaid string purse, that headband, the gloves; and then the surreal way the male torso grows out of a pile of suitcases and the disappearing train. Is she coming or going? Is it a dream, or is it indeed the real thing?