Every now and then I get a little bit obsessed by a particular book and all the other stories I've got on the go get put to one side.
This time my obsessive behaviour started in a rather unlikely location _ WH Smith at Oxford railway station, where the grainy cover of a paperback caught my eye.
The book was City of Dark Hearts by James Conan, and the bowler-hatted figure reminded me of the bloke I had seen on Jed Rubenfeld's Interpretation of Murder, and a similar chap on the jacket of Ruiz Zafon's Shadow of the Wind, a book I loved.
I picked it up. "A page-turning treat," according to Morse writer Colin Dexter. After thumbing through the chunky paperback, I found that Conan is a figment of the publisher's imagination, and that the book was written by Oxford duo Helen Rappaport and William Horwood.
Rappaport is a historian and Horwood a fantasy writer. I started reading the tale, about a gung-ho girl journalist tracking down a missing woman at the World's Fair in 1890s Chicago, and couldn't stop.
It was, indeed, a page turner and I wanted to find out more. It didn't take me long to get Helen's number and she told me all about it, but that still wasn't enough for me.
When Helen revealed that the book was first published last year as Dark Hearts of Chicago, with an additional 50,000 words, I invited myself round to her house in north Oxford to pick up a copy, which she very kindly signed.
I then ditched the paperback I was reading — I was about 400 pages through — and read to the end using the softback instead.
I still wasn't finished — I telephoned Mr Horwood and asked him if he would sign the book, and he also kindly agreed. My conversation with the writing duo will feature in next week's Guide in the Oxford Mail.
Perhaps I am going over the top about this book, but I don't think so because the British reading public appears to agree with me.
According to the trade mag Bookseller, City of Dark Hearts is the highest new entry at 21 in the UK's top 50 bestsellers. It is also number 15 in the top 20 mass market fiction chart.
I'm delighted that this enthralling tale in 1890s Chicago was devised in Oxford and is heading up the charts.
My visit to downtown Chicago has meant putting Kipling on hold, but thanks to Oxford University Press, which is relaunching its Oxford World's Classics series, I have handsome new paperback editions of Kim, and The Man Who Would Be King and other stories. When I was a kid, I loved the film starring Caine and Connery, but cannot recall reading the tale, so I look forward to it.