Mine were. But at Thanskgiving dinner, somewhere between the turkey and the pudding, we began to talk
about cranberries; and one of the guests raised an interesting question. "Why is it," he asked, "that one public announcement about a relatively small number of berries can produce a boycott—while twenty years of hullabaloo about cigarettes and cancer has had ab­solutely no effect on tobacco sales?"

MY SHERLOCK HOLMES INSTINCTS ARE AROUSED

There's something you should know about me at this point. For many years now, a large part of my in­come has come from writing detective stories for maga­zines, radio and television. And when I'm presented with a knotty problem, I love to dig around for answers. The more confusing the leads, the happier I am about ferreting out the facts.

This book probably began on that day in November, 1959, when the odd behavior of our cigarette-smoking nation became strikingly, surprisingly apparent to me.