The Bookfair Murders [antikvár]

CHAPTERONEil '^v, 'Ml:''-IA.lSide from the murder, it was a predictable Bertelsmann party. A gathering of the usual crowd. Most of them had been coming to the Frankfurt Bookfair for fifteen years or more. You didn't earn the right to Frankfurt until you had been around for a few years and you hadn't really arrived in publishing until you had a few Frankfurts under your belt.Some of the older men were veterans of the last War, survivors of long-forgotten battlefields. At the Bookfair were representatives of all the countries that had been bent on annihilating one another. A dozen years ago, a senior man from Knopf recognized his former prison guard inside the well-pressed suit of a Heibon-sha executive, stood staring at him for a moment or two, then threw his champagne into the starded Japanese face. Both were well over sixty and neither chose to pursue the matter beyond the public insult. The following year, Heibon-sha sent a new man, one who had sat out the War on a troop ship.Despite Bertelsmann's avid support for the Jerusalem Book-fair, there were those who never felt comfortable at the party.