Joe Bennett: Entertainment? I read for the pleasures of truth and beauty

In the real world murder is an act of sordor, not a cryptic crossword clue like it is in an Agatha Christie book. Photo / 123rf

'I'd like to return this book,' I said.

The young man looked up from the counter where he had been studying his phone.

'Sorry?'

'I'd like to return this book.'

'This is a second-hand bookshop, sir, not a library.'

'I know.'

'Is there something wrong with the book?'

'Not physically no. The pages turn. The ink has not run. The binding is in order. The book as artefact is fine.'

'So there is something wrong with the contents of the book.'

'Now the hound has sniffed the fox.'

'Sorry?'

'Yes, there is something wrong with the contents of the book.'

'It is not customary, sir, to give refunds on the grounds of disappointing content. In this business it is caveat emptor.'

'I do not want a refund,' I said.

'You do not want a refund?'

'No I do not. All I want is for you to take the book back. You are to become once again its proprietor and resume all the rights over it that come with that status. You can burn it, swat flies with it, re-sell it, whatever you wish. Do I make myself clear?'

'Abundantly,' said the youth.

'I do not want this book to sully my shelves one moment longer. The mistake of buying it was mine and I acknowledge it and I seek to undo it and return to the state of grace in which I lived before this catastrophic error of judgment. So take the book please and I shall be on my way,' and so saying I handed it to him and he looked at it for the first time.

'Agatha Christie's very popular, you know,' he said.

'I am aware, young man, that she is very popular. Indeed her popularity is the reason I bought the book in the first place.'

I was mulling the trolley of $5 books that you habitually leave on the pavement outside as bait for the likes of me, and I saw this volume of Ms Christie's work and it struck me that I had reached the age of 64 without having read a single word by one who has sold hundreds of millions of books and presumably given pleasure to hundreds of millions of readers and I thought to myself that there could be no possible harm in dipping my nose between these covers to find out what all the fuss was about.

'But I must add that even as I did so a voice in my head was telling me this would not turn out well. Take it from me, young man - though I am of course aware that the likelihood of you acting on advice from a man of my age is approximately nil - you should always listen to such a voice.

'But I did not. I bought the book, and took it home and then last night I settled down after dinner to break my duck, as it were, with Agatha Christie. I chose to accompany the event with a glass of Côtes du Rhône complete with circumflexes.'

'And you did not like it.'

'I adored it.'

'But I thought you said ...'

'I adored the Côtes du Rhône. The Agatha Christie I abhorred. It is a collection of short stories. Each story features an improbable gathering of characters from the British upper-middle classes, one of whom dies in strange circumstances, presumably murdered. Enter a Belgian detective, who invariably and implausibly solves the mystery.'

'And your problem with all that is…?'

'My problem with all that, as you so eloquently put it, is that it is so far divorced from the reality of human behaviour that it might as well be about baboons. In the real world murder is an act of sordor, not a cryptic crossword clue.'

'It's entertainment.'

'Entertainment! I do not read for entertainment, young man. I read for the pleasures of truth and beauty.'

'Ah, so this is all just snobbery.'

'The hound has caught the fox, at last,' I said. And I went on my way rejoicing.