(Matthew McDermott)
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There’s a mystery unfolding in the East Village.
An unknown writer is serializing his or her new whodunit on the neighborhood’s streets, posting each page on a different lamppost.
Although the direction of the plot is difficult to make sense of at this point, given the quirky publishing platform, the book, titled “Holy Crap,” appears to concern a narrator who just became a parent.
“No. No thank you. Um, no,” begins Page 7, which was left on a lamppost at Seventh Street and First Avenue. “Then the baby is on a chest. She is wrapped in a white blanket with green trim.”
The narrator, who could be either male or female, is told by a nurse: “Most babies aren’t beautiful when they are born. It takes about a month to get cute. But your baby is beautiful. The most beautiful baby.”
The scene in the maternity ward ends on an ominous note.
“A woman walks from the bathroom, whom I still have no memory of, in this bedroom that I have no memory of, and out to some other room that I have no memory of,” the narrator explains.
” ‘Headache. Terrible headache,’ I say through my teeth. ‘Killing me. I think something’s wrong.’ ‘Well, whose fault is that?’ the woman’s voice says.”
At the bottom of the page, the reader is directed to St. Marks Place between First and Second avenues to find Page 8.
The Post found Page 8 put up on a lamppost at the location as advertised, although it was unable to locate Pages 1 through 6.
Although no author has yet publicly taken credit for the work, the East Village had no shortage of opinions about it.
“Honestly, I don’t like the idea. I hate it when people just post things everywhere,” said Joe Curanhj, 42, owner of Stromboli Pizza, located right in front of the lamppost bearing Page 8. “They have the Internet, why don’t they use that?”
But Paul Purvine, 28, a bartender at V Bar across the street, disagreed.
“I love any interactive art form. And I think this is a really cool idea,” he said. “What a great way to introduce the neighborhood. It could be a great way to meet other people.”
Still, posting individual pages on lampposts around town does pose some problems, noted cabdriver Alioune Nbengue, 45.
“It’s creative and really interesting, but it might take a really long time to read the whole book this way,” he said. “Books have a lot of pages.”