Search Engine Serendipity

In a strange piece of serendipity I found an old mystery book online while searching for a painting I saw on pinterest where the link was broken. I forgot what words I was using. At any rate, the words "yellow dress" we're a part of my search.




The book had a yellow dress on the cover, but it wasn't prominently featured. The story does pivot around a murder victim found without her dress on - and later you find out that it was a bright yellow dress. So I am a little amazed and intrigued by how the book came up and how the search engines work. Not probably enough to do any research, but the thought did cross my mind. I used to know some of that stuff when I worked closer to web development and web content.

The book is written in the late 1950's and several "time period" things amused me.

One was when the lead detective/narrator is thinking about possible suspects for the murder. He goes through each in turn listing the listing the pros and cons. For one he mentions the irony of this person and that it would be comparable to a cheap dime novel from the discount store. I had to go look at the cover for the price of this novel. I know you are scrolling up to see the cover again now! I was pleased to see how high my standards apparently would've been 50 years ago.

Another thing that got me thinking was this passage:

Justice and vengeance were no longer the motivations of this manhunt. The women who had yesterday scolded their men, "Al, [or Ray, or Joe,] if you think you're going out chasing into that swamp half the night for that lunatic you've got another think coming. Let the Sheriff get him. He's paid to do it," would now be silent in the face of yet another killing. The men would, most of them, not even have consulted their women. They would have quietly listened to the news broadcasts and as quietly gone to the closets or the attics for whatever weapon they happened to own. The women would have understood that this was, after all, a man's world and that men must band together for the defense of their homes and their women...

Is this hopelessly out of date because of the social norms back then? Or are we just too blasé today to actually care enough to help out? The recent "movie theater massacre" and the outpouring of sympathy, visits by celebrities, foundations, donations, etc. lead me to think it isn't the latter. But it is hard for me to be objective about this since it is my hometown currently and, while we are always one degree away from personally knowing someone, we have been to that theater and Iggy's work is close to it.

The other thing that was continually fun about reading this book was the old library smell it had. It is a slim book (less than 200 pages, but I actually mean it is small in size since it was slightly bigger than a 3x5 photo and about as thin as my iPad). But the smell never went away in the 3 months I've had the book or the week it took me to read it. I wonder when they will have smell-o-vision (I already have a 3d tv so at least smell-o-vision movies can't be far off) or smell-enhanced e-books.

I did find the painting I was looking for, by the way, but it wasn't anything I saved or thought about buying. But I did enjoy reading the old book I did end up buying. And I look forward to my next Search Engine Serendipity.