THE BRIC-A-BRAC MAN
By
Ever since It Happened in Boston it's been happening again--Greenan's a collector of chance dispositions, be they murder or curios. This time, a reminiscent this time, it's Arnold Hopkins, antique dealer, garbage picker, and sometime thief (you could easily warm to the notion of his lifting a couple of bronze urns from Mount Auburn cemetery) who lives by his wits when they're not in the throes of ""spasmodic amnesia."" He's sometimes threatened by his vicious cousin Maurice who looks exactly like him. In between an opal glass epergne here, a bow-front china closet there, he collaborates with Maurice to tunnel through to the next house where Arnold steals a $100,000 painting, immediately unsaleable after a simultaneous murder occurs upstairs, with more and worse to follow. . . . This is one of those genial ding-a-ling items you don't know quite what to do with--put it on the whatnot, next to the mustache jar?