Smuggling Made Easy

Vice Patrol 16 comments

Sneak it Through coverSneak it Through: Smuggling Made Easier
Connor
1984

Submitter: This book was found on shelf by one of our library clerks and brought to my attention. A surprising purchase, and my only guess is a collection development librarian had watched too many episodes of Magnum, P.I., Remington Steele, and/or the A-team. However, its value to a public library seems limited even with the published date of 1984. Those like us in the northern climates will enjoy the snow on the car roof trick.

Holly: Because, as the back cover says, “You never know what you might want to smuggle when times get tough!”

Sneak it through back cover

Places of concealment - binder

Places of concealment - typewriter

Places of concealment - car

16 comments

  1. More fun with Paladin Press, the disinformation operation established to counter the Freedom of Information Act by flooding shelves with books full of fake “government publications”.

      1. Here’s the Wiki:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladin_Press

        They seem to have been, at minimum, useful idiots who’d certainly grab at the chance to publish “leaked top secret stuff” that the CIA and FBI could “accidentally” declassify.

        Also directly linked to “Soldier of Fortune” magazine, so yeah. Stooges at best.

  2. Ooh, another of Paladin’s books designed to have the opposite effect. Pretty sure authorities in 1984 could have spotted most of these. Certainly in the Soviet Bloc.

    Even more useless today with more x-rays, drug sniffer dogs, and nobody being able to afford checked luggage in the US.

    And a typewriter nowadays probably is going to get noticed.

    I’d think you could only use the “under the headlining” method once, what with the use of Super Glue. Not to mention those cloth headliners always ripped and sagged on their own.

    Wouldn’t someone have noticed if only a car’s roof was covered in snow? What if it warmed up and the snow melted off during your travels or a big wind blew it off?

    I also wonder why a librarian would buy a book on how to tell people to commit crimes across national borders. Was this library situated in a pot-growing zone or something? Or in the pay of Big Headlining?

    1. Well, they certainly can visit the library _themselves_ and read up on all of this after they catch someone who tells them where they got the idea. Then again the various agencys probably had a subscription to Paladin’s catalog and just ordered everything new each time.

  3. Also, no matter how desperate you are, you’re probably going to think twice about eating “fresh” meat that’s been traveling for a while…

  4. Security was a real joke before 9/11, but this book should come with a sequel “101 Fun Things To Do While In Prison”, or “Invasive Organisms, The Fad That’s Sweeping The Ecosystem!”

  5. when i saw a musical instrument used for contraband, the first thing that came to mind was Lucy hiding a big piece of cheese in Ricky’s band instruments.

  6. Holly: Because, as the back cover says, “You never know what you might want to smuggle when times get tough!”

    Oh my G_d, I’m laughing ’til I’m cramping (emoji expressed as verbal concept typewritten in alphanumeric characters of this language.)

  8. Nowadays, criminal types smuggle people or try to across the Mexico-US border and too many people die because of that. No humor in that.
    So how were these books written in those days in the 1980s? Humor does change and nothing is ever just a joke.
    Aren’t such books that instruct how to break laws indeed against the law?
    I’m glad Law and Order set us straight.

  10. I will never forget when I worked in a k-8 library and found a book without a call number on its spine sitting amongst all the other books. Pull it off the shelf and I can tell something is wrong. It’s hollowed out and a bottle of Captain Morgan Spiced rum was in side. Not sure if it was left there by the cleaning crew or one of the kids. I just slipped it back on the shelf an let them have their fun.

  11. A friend of mine told me a co-worker of his was stopped in Asia for carrying a lot of cash in a money belt. They knew he had it because they had money-sniffing dogs! I’m not making that up!

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