On June 18, 2007, skulduggery and detective adventure seeped out from an unlikely source – an otherwise stodgy 108-page-long committee report to the administrators of a government research institution in Washington, DC. The story’s villains are magnificent, because we meet them only as darkly sketched figures.
The report’s title is dull enough: A Report to the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. But the names of its three authors will be recognised by any Agatha Christie fan for their cartoonishly ringing roundness: The honourable Charles A Bowsher, The honourable Stephen D Potts, and AW “Pete” Smith, Jr.
The report’s introduction seems to have its tongue sutured into its cheek…
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.
