I was tagged over at SWOPeast’s blog, but feel it’s more appropiate to answer here.

Elizabeth Pisani tagged me. Quite an honor.

The rules:
* look up page 123 in the book that is nearest to you at this very minute
* look for the fifth sentence
* then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123.

The book closest to me is what I’m currently reading Sin in the Second City (I’m discounting the grammar books and thesauruses, papers and news magazines on my desk).

The fifth sentence

What could be done about the plethora of nickel theaters showing lurid films like The Thaw-White Case and A Husband Murdering His Wife?

Following

There were children congregating at these places! The newspapers printed scoreboards that tabulated murders and muggings, as if such crimes were scheduled like baseball games and horse races: a burglary every three hours, a holdup every six hours, and a suicide and murder every day. Women bashed on the head with pieces of gas pipe, coils of copper strung around their necks, a cloth wet with choloroform swathed over their nostrils.

Bonus: The concluding sentence in that paragraph “Easier prey than kicking a stray dog or beating a heaving horse.”

This was an interesting meme. Though I got in some good reading time on this book last night and am well past this page, I thought this was going to be a boring passage (relative to the rest of the book). Instead, I remember reading this shocking paragraph well. I physically flinched as I read the last two sentences.

I’m tagging the first possible readers who come to mind: Jessica (I know she’s always reading!), Lily, Casey and Amber.