Remember when we were the most literate city in the universe until Minneapolis stole our crown of books away from us? Well, maybe some of that reading was just a front for international gun smuggling. Recently a plot by a liver-spotted old man with a French accent was foiled by an attentive UPS agent:

An alert clerk at a Wallingford UPS Store was preparing to ship the Paris-bound books on Jan. 31 when she noticed that one of the hardbacks rattled, according to police reports. The woman shook the book and spotted a gun part slipping through the pages. [p-i]

And what books were chosen for their ability to hide weapons? Among the hollowed out volumes were Richard Tarnas’s Cosmos and Psyche and Isaac Asimov’s Chronology of the World.

Related posts:

1. Rats! Foiled through Craigslist
2. Eat Your Words
3. Tonight: Rosanne Olson
4. Has The Stranger Lost The Plot?
5. Friends of the Library