Those of you of a certain age might remember that Hancock Half Hour (on the TV – even I’m not really old enough to remember much of the radio versions!) in which he took out a murder mystery thriller from the library, got totally engrossed in it, only to find the last page, with its thrilling denouement, missing.
Recall, if you can, that crestfallen look that only Hancock could invoke, hangdog in the extreme, turned languidly to camera and the pouring forth of invective that followed.
Then you’ll have some idea of the brassed-offedness I felt half-way through a Christmas present tome that I had got my teeth into which all of a sudden became a confusing morass of duplicated pages and missing chapters.
Usually I’m not one for getting engrossed in books, spending much of my T&A day, as I do, reading in some form or other.
But in the quieter festive hours of the Yuletide break, I had pushed on reading this particular present and was on course to actually finish it in something of a record time.
But then, at page 116 of Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner (a first hand account of the unfolding terror of 1930s Germany and its Nazification – intriguing if not exactly rib-tickling) things began to fall apart.
As I turned the page, suddenly I was back at page 85 and wondering why things didn’t seem to read on as they should.
Perhaps it was the intervention of several picture pages that had confused the book binder.
Temporarily non-plussed, I soon shuffled forward and was able to resume the text at page 117 again, and was soon back among the dark days of The Fuhrer’s rise to power.
But, alas, come page 132 we suddenly leaped forward to page 166 and four chapters later.
I was crestfallen, Hancock-like, unable and unwilling to try and string a thread across the missing pages. This "short, stabbing, brilliant book" as one reviewer on its back page described it, was indeed very short, had stabbed me, metaphorically-speaking, in the heart, and would have to wait to see if I was to think it brilliant to the end.
I just hope the publishers will have a full replacement copy when it is returned in its seasonal wrapping with a letter of complaint!