When the unofficial tour continued, I offered up some sinister stories about library life, explaining how, before pressure plates were inserted under the compact shelving, a member of our stack crew had been crushed to death by a closing wall of books. Bringing my hands together slowly to reinforce the image, I said, "Make no mistake. Libraries are packed with danger."

Meet Alexander Short, the main character in Allen Kurzwell's new novel, The Grand Complication. The novel spends much of its time in a large city library, which has "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter" engraved in Latin over the entrance to the stacks. You can see how this book is relevant--and quite irreverent--when it comes to life as an employee in any library. Kurzwell's book bunker is populated by some intriguing characters. There's Alexander Short, of course, who has an obsession with list-making and "enclosures." There is Short's short-tempered wife, Nic, who is French, wears harem pants, and is obsessed with pop-up books, and well, with things that pop up in general. There is also Mr. Singh, the religiously ardent security guard, who has been given free rein with his security probe, as well as Mr. Paradis, the janitor, who has memorized the entire Dewey decimal shelf system and can correctly direct visitors to the exact location of any subject heading. In addition to these characters, there is also Norton (the computer geek) and the irksome Grote, (the Conservationist with a capital C) and of course, Short's boss and nemesis, Mr."Dinty" Dinthofer, who at one point in the book, threatens Short with "driving a bookmobile around the Amish countryside."

As promised by the title, the book gets more complicated as the tale unfolds. Short is approached by a strange man (in a library, imagine that) who asks Short to do research for him on the side. The research involves a curio cabinet. The stranger, Mr. Jesson, has a picture of the cabinet in its original state, and as a "collector", Mr. Jesson has restored all items to the cabinet, except for one--a timepiece, which may or may not have been owned and worn by none other than Marie Antoinette. Along the way, Short runs into a variety of "collectors" all of whom possess idiosyncracies that most bibliophiles, or people who work with bibliophiles, will find true to life and at times, both disturbing and hilarious. Kurzwell has an obvious love of history and researchers thereof, which does shine through in many of the passages in the book.

The novel culminates during the library's annual contest known as "Class Struggle" which pits the insipid Grote against the janitor, Paradis, for the title of "Lord of Misrule," which means that for one day, the winner of the contest gets to run the library. I won't give anything more away about this book, but I will say that it is a really funny look at how libraries interact with people and vice versa. In addition to attention to his setting, Kurzwell also provides the reader with an endearing look at what makes people tick. Grade: B+