News From IL where 117 hardcover cookbooks mysteriously disappeared in 2001, most likely a few at a time, from the Bettendorf Public Library.
Now, after a search of a Bettendorf apartment, police said Wednesday that they have located those books and about 300 more that had turned up missing from other Quad-City area libraries.
Although an arrest has not yet been made in the case, Bettendorf police expect to charge a suspect with first-degree felony theft. Exactly how the books were spirited out of libraries and why remains unclear.
At the time of their initial disappearance, Clow called the missing volumes “big, beautiful, specialty and general cookbooks — an amazing list of wonderful things.�
Purchased at retail, they would have cost more than $2,300. The value listed by the library was actually $1,391, a number that represented about 5 percent of its $28,000 budget for purchasing nonfiction books.
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No books were found to be missing from other subject areas at the Bettendorf library, but various types of publications were stolen from other area libraries.
If he read them…
Freaky. Well, I’d let him off with community service and a fine IF he read them. Oral test:
1. Quick – give me a recipe for a custard tart!
2. I just cooked a 12lb Turkey, and it’s looking a little dry. Give me a quick fix.
3. Give me three (3) ways to use rutabega.
If he knows, then at least he used the books. Otherwise chain him to a circulation desk for a week…
A sentence to cook
And…
I’d make him cook meals for the entire library staff for an entire year…
Unless he can’t cook and has just been lookin at the pictures…
Then… he can wash the dirty dishes of every member of the library staff at home or at work (whichever they choose) every day for a year !