Loading...
 
TFA: The Mayor of the Twentieth Century
Print
English
Flash player not available.


Click on the covers for more information on the different editions, including their availability.
If you cannot view the image, download the most recent version of Flash Player(external link)

The Mayor of the Twentieth Century

London. On December 1, 1887; July 7, August 8, September 30, one day in the month of October and on the 9th of November, 1888; on the 1st of June, the 17th of July and the 10th of September 1889...

The disguise was perfect.

Nobody ever saw him, except, of course, the victims.

They saw him.

Who would have expected?

He wore a costume of trout fishing in America. He wore mountains on his elbows and bluejays on the collar of his shirt. Deep water flowed through the lilies that were entwined about his shoelaces. A bullfrog kept croaking in his watch pocket and the air was filled with the sweet smell of ripe blackberry bushes.

He wore trout fishing in America as a costume to hide his own appearance from the world while he performed his deeds of murder in the night.

Who would have expected?

Nobody!

Scotland Yard?

(Pouf !)

They were always a hundred miles away, wearing halibut-stalker hats, looking under the dust.

Nobody ever found out.

O, now he's the Mayor of the Twentieth Century! A razor, a knife and a ukelele are his favorite instruments.

Of course, it would have to be a ukelele. Nobody else would have thought of it, pulled like a plow through the intestines.


Richard Brautigan
Trout Fishing in America