Murder Attempt on a Novelist, and Halloween Kills

If this isn’t the cake-taking week of book news from surprising corners of the world, then it’s going to take a whole lot of Antarctican biographers and Tongan encyclopedists to unseat it. A few days ago, we had the Vast Concrete Book in Turkmenistan at Dibs! And today, to our horror, Reuters reports a shocking crime against a literary colossus in the tiny Adriatic republic of Montenegro. “One of Montenegro's leading novelists said on Wednesday he was beaten and his driver shot dead late on Tuesday in the capital, Podgorica. Jevrem Brkovic, 73 ... said he was attacked outside his apartment building by masked assailants armed with guns and metal clubs. His driver and bodyguard, 53-year-old Srdjan Vojicic, was shot dead. Brkovic himself was treated in hospital for head injuries.” Well, that is just f&*%ed. What work of fiction could possibly have aroused such a lethal frenzy? Brkovic “said the attack was linked to his latest book, A Duklja Lover, a novel set in an underworld where crime and politics come together. ‘It was the act of killers and mafia bosses who recognised themselves in my latest novel,’ Brkovic said. No stranger to controversy, the outspoken writer fled to Croatia in the early 1990s after he fell out with Serb nationalists over the 1991-95 war in Croatia. He returned to Montenegro in 1999... The new country is still dealing with the image of lawlessness it acquired in the 1990s, when smugglers using its rugged coast made fortunes from breaking sanctions imposed on the rump Yugoslavia for its role in the Bosnia war.” Now, as you will notice if you click the link, that is actually what the article says. “Imposed on the rump Yugoslavia.” Anyway it’s a perilous region for individuals who deal in words. Two years ago, the editor of a main Montenegrin newspaper “was shot dead and his death was seen as resulting from his public campaign against officials he accused of having mafia links. His killers have not been found.” You bet they haven’t.

Meanwhile, a Canadian doctor claims that Halloween causes cancer. “Fear will provoke acidity in the body. Anything that provokes negativity in the body will have a chemical reaction and cause the body to become acidic,” insists Dr. Laurence Magne of British Columbia, author of Cancer-Free for Life. (She also promises to help you “Discover The Simple, Yet Effective Ways To Rid Your Body Of Cancer And All Terminal Illnesses.” All of them? Ebola? Because I’ve got this little puncture wound and it’s — urggghh, the blood, my nostrils, it’s ... just kidding. About something horrible.) In a timely press release, Dr. Magne adds: “Halloween is the celebration of fear. People like to be afraid. People wear scary make-believe ghosts and witches costumes. Children are dressed in ugly scary costumes and sent from door to door.... Next, children will want to eat ALL the candy at once, ruin their appetite, and think of the damage they're doing to their body with the colorants they’re ingesting. At the unconscious level, Halloween triggers memories of childhood Halloween, times when we were scared. These fears are brought to the surface during Halloween.” So don’t be scared. Because that could kill you. Being scared, that is. Of death. Which could kill you. Dead. Don’t be scared.