Mystery in the Pseudointellectual Boston Scene

Weird things are afoot.

It all started last time the crazies got together. We had our fill of food and drink. The conversation had turned to nudist beaches and the next thing we knew, books were stolen, a member was held up, and then German Nihilists hijacked the Boston bookclub blog.

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That's when we thought "What the hell is going on?"
Then a couple of days later this picture appeared:

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Was our finger-gun-wielding-German-nihilist book thief toying with us? From the picture we deduced that he/she/they was obviously a scientist, perhaps a molecular biologist?

Staring closely at the picture of test tubes, empty racks and the missing books, we noted a lab notebook with the inscription "ARS DREI".

Ars Drei? What does this mean? Perhaps some Dan Brown inspired incantation. But no! How could anyone affiliated with our cutting edge bookclub even associate with such lowbrow non-literature. Moreover "Dan Brown inspired" may qualify as an oxymoron (except if you're Ron Howard). We expanded our search.

Using our etymological prowess, and discarded degrees, we deduced that "Ars" was Latin for art. But Drei? Memories of my boss shouting out "drei, vier" to initiate one of our monthly Happy Birthday sing-alongs, leapt into my brain. Three! A big German three!

We couldn't make any sense of it.

With nothing left we decided to stare at the kidnapper's data - isn't that what we all do when things just don't make sense? Lo and behold the identity of the thief appeared behind (and above) the last three restriction digests:

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