Our story begins in Cunninghamopolis, a city of beauty...and menace.

Enter our hero, Detective Dick Dewey, hardboiled but haunted by his most recent case, The Case of the Mobile Meth Lab, (in which his sidekick, Boswell, was seduced by evil and is out of commission, while recovering in rehab)

When the weight of the underworld is too much, and when the dream-catchers Boswell has been making from Popsicle sticks are not enough to lift his spirits, our hero seeks comfort in the pages of a good book... "What light?" he asks himself, "what light must surely break soon through yonder window?"

But even in the peaceful environment of the metropolis library, danger awaits him...

...and deepening mysteries lurk around every corner. But nothing escapes the eagle eye of our detective, who follows this suspicious character into the stacks... 

"What's this, Boswell?" our hero asks, out of habit. "Something strange is surely afoot here!"

And then, from the gloom of the stacks, a dastardly villain accosts our hero--it is every library's nemesis, the Uncontrolled Zipper!!!

"Yegads, Boswell!" the detective exclaims. "It's time to close this book!"

KERBLAM! "Take that, you emperor of indecency!"

KERPOW! "Here's more of that, you fiend!"

Justice prevails, dear readers, when the heart is vigilant and the eye is keen. And so, another crime scene is closed by Detective Dick Dewey, defender of the stacks...

But our hero's sad work is never done. Tune in next time, when Boswell returns from rehab to help our detective declaw Cat Woman in The Case of the Purr-loined Purse.