Airport Book Saga

I believe that one should never take personal relationships for granted. However, there are a few other things in life that should be as we expect them to be, without surprises.

One of those things, and as an author of several books I feel strongly about this, is that when you buy a book it should have all the pages in it. Let me explain.

I was flying from Ft. Lauderdale to Helsinki via Dallas. The morning of departure, my Dallas to Helsinki flight was cancelled, and I was booked on a flight later in the day. This meant I had a much longer layover at Dallas Fort Worth airport.

Thus, I went browsing in a Ft. Lauderdale airport bookstore to find additional reading. I chose a 356-page paperback by a best-selling thriller author.

The exciting story was a useful diversion during my stopover and two-thirds the way through the book tension was building. That’s when the unexpected happened. Page 256 that I had just read was followed by page 289.

From there the story continued to page 320 before inexplicably returning to page 289 once again. I will point out this was not a time travel story. I was eventually able to reach the end of the book, but 33 pages of the plot’s build-up were missing, and I might add, no pages had been torn from the binding.

Once home, I wrote to the publisher, a major international firm, to inform them where I had purchased the book, thinking that they would like to know if corrective action was needed on the print run. In reply, they did not comment on that, but did “apologize for the inconvenience” and offered to send a new copy of the book to Helsinki.

That’s when the drama started with a well-known international courier who failed in all aspects of delivery and customer service, as you can see from the many overlapping labels on the packaging. When I informed the publisher about my difficulties getting the book they did at least “apologize for the frustration this has caused.”

Four weeks after my original email to the publisher I now have the ‘whole’ book in my possession. I can’t wait to find out what happened on pages 257-288.