No matter where in the world I find myself, my first few minutes at an Airbnb are always the same.
Fling open a window or a door to take in the view. Scan the place for hidden cameras. Make a beeline for the bookshelf.
It’s here where I find the novel that will haunt me for the next few weeks. Not necessarily because it’s any good.
Airbnb book fare is generally cheap and cheerful. A common-sense response to hosting a parade of strangers who may have sticky fingers.
So rather than a matter of Pulitzer-winning plot, I’m plagued because my holiday is always too short to finish the book I select from my Airbnb’s inevitable store of brightly coloured spines.
The plot begins to bubble and thicken. Then I go home and I spend the next couple of days searching high and low for a random paperback from 2005.
After a recent trip to Swakopmund, much like private investigator Elvis Cole I’m on the hunt.
I’ve started ‘The Forgotten Man’ by Robert Crais and I’m dying to know how it ends. Crais is the kind of bestselling author who has written over 20 novels, starting with ‘The Monkey’s Raincoat’ in 1987.
His literary oeuvre involves the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike series, which follows a private investigator working out of Los Angeles as he tracks murderers, solves mysteries and wisecracks.
I haven’t read an Elvis Cole novel before. But, spread out on my Airbnb’s deep purple couch, watching the cold Atlantic roll towards the shore on an unseasonably cold almost-spring day, I’m all in.
By the time my activity-filled, four-day trip comes to an end, I’ve read 173 pages and sh*t is getting lit.
They say reading, literacy and attention spans are long dead, so I contemplate taking the book along for the four-hour road trip home thinking nobody will miss it. I’ll return it in the post, I tell myself. I’ll send it back with a friend.
The former girl scout in me prevails and I leave the book on the bedside table under a painting of a scowling woman with furious red eyes.
Airbnbs are supposed to be welcoming. So I’d wondered why the owner would put such a menacing and watching presence in the room. But as I contemplate book theft, I realise the reason may be more obvious than I initially realised.
As the woman glares, I take photos of a few chapters on my phone and read them on the ride home. It’s a bad idea because maybe that’s illegal, and also because I just fall deeper into the drama.
When I get home, wild-eyed, I rummage around bookstores, searching for a 20-year-old novel that nobody seems to have heard of. My sister says I could probably buy and read the book online, but I scoff at the suggestion.
Who reads books online? Oh, wait. Everyone.
But it’s not my thing.
I’m old school, probably insufferable, and I want the real deal. Windhoek’s drought of bookstores disappoint and I’m about to give up when the answer comes to me like the sun after a storm: The place to find piles and piles of ancient books, written by the kind of prolific authors you find on Airbnb bookshelves is obvious – Uncle Spike’s Book Exchange!
I hurry there 30 minutes before closing on a Saturday afternoon and the stack of yellowing N$20 books piled near the door and on the floor looks promising.
Towards the back, I find a name I haven’t seen in days or at any of the mall bookstores I’ve popped into so far.
Crais. There he is.
I scan the titles for ‘The Forgotten Man’, anticipating a moment of triumph, but life cues the sad trombone instead.
Uncle Spike’s doesn’t have it.
But they do have a few other Crais titles. I pick one called ‘Voodoo River’ because I like New Orleans and bodies of water and call it a day.
I also get ‘The Grass Harp’ by Truman Capote because it jumps out at me as I’m headed for the till.
As the cashier rings up my purchase, I toss a bookmark on my small stash and wonder if any of this literary goose chase can be avoided with a few tweaks.
Don’t start reading books you know you won’t finish.
Take your own book to Airbnbs.
Get an actual grip.
But where’s the fun in that?
