Lawman
Grace Kenney
players determine what book each of the snippets refers to. none of these books actually exist; they are instead referred to in other books that do exist. the last name of the actual author is obtained. the red number on the snippets gives which letter to take from each author's name. the letters spell KILLED ROCKY, which is a rocky horror reference, from which we get the answer, RIFFRAFF
The books are [in order]:
| Letter | Number | Fictional Book | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| K | 4 | "The red book" bilbo baggins, frodo, sam, et al | Tolkien | [particularly the ROTK appendices] |
| I | 4 | "The secret goldfish" - d.b. caulfield | Salinger | Catcher in the Rye |
| L | 3 | "The light at the end of the tunnel" - maurice mandrake | Willis | Passage |
| L | 5 | "The horn of joy" - matthew maddox | L'engle | A Swiftly Tilting Planet |
| E | 5 | "The book of bokonnon" - bokonnon | Vonnegut | Cat's Cradle |
| D | 2 | "Well, that about wraps it up for god" - oolon colluphid | Adams | Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy |
| R | 3 | "The unstrung harp" - c.f. earbrass | Gorey | Unstrung Harp |
| O | 1 | "Theory and practice of oligarchical collectivism" - Emanuel Goldstein | Orwell | 1984 |
| C | 5 | "The necronomicon" - abdul alhazred | Lovecraft | The Hound, originally |
| K | 4 | "Memorial" - Richard Babley | Dickens | David Copperfield |
| Y | 2 | "Plays of Ford, Webster, Torneur, and Wharfinger" - Dr. Emory Bortz | Pynchon | The Crying of Lot 49 |
FORTSAS, the name of the crook in the intro, is a clue. run a google search for it - there was a famous prank pulled on bibliophiles where a fake count named fortsas made a list of books that didn't exist and claimed he was going to auction them off. people believed they did exist and showed up to the auction, to be laughed at. This gives us a clue - the snippets all refer to books that don't exist.
A few of them are google-able. most aren't because they're blurbs I made up. Blah. If people haven't read much recently, well, they lose. This is why the puzzle will either be very hard or very easy, depending.