Obituary 7

Literary celebrity Evil Editor (1888-2009) was found dead yesterday morning in the Olympic-sized swimming pool behind his palatial home.

According to investigators, the case remains a mystery. He did not drown. The cause of death was exsanguination, and the body was covered with hundreds of tiny tooth- and claw marks. Next-door neighbor Talpianna, a self-described “minion” of the deceased, who discovered the body, stated, “There’s a lot of that going on around here. It’s very strange.”

Other “minions” also commented. Robin sobbed, “He had so much to live for—namely me!” Julie W. wept hysterically and told our reporter that she was much too delicate to discuss the death, but would he care to read her query letter and sample pages? Anon. refused to be quoted by name but claimed to be deeply grieved.

And Dave gave a long disquisition on Etruscan funeral practices, which was quite irrelevant as a Miss Snark, who described herself as the deceased’s closest relative, announced that the body would be taken down to the shore and tossed off the end of the pier, whereupon it would be eaten by the Query Shark. “It was what Evil wanted,” she said. “He was a back-to-nature kind of guy.”

Other literary lights had their own comments on Evil Editor’s passing:

John Grisham: “He leaves a much-needed gap in the world of contemporary literature.”

Anne Rice: “I adored him. He told me I was the greatest chick-lit novelist currently writing.”

Dan Brown: “Who the hell is Evil Editor?”

---tal