I have my own little quirks, and I wonder if others are guilty of the same sins I have been known to commit with mystery novels and mystery novelists. Search your consciences. Do you indulge in any of the following?

Spoiling the Experience

1. Lend a mystery novel to a friend. Lie about whodunit and the fact that the book is lousy.

2. Lend a good mystery novel to a friend. Casually mention the one thing that will give away the plot.

3. Borrow a mystery novel from a friend. Lend it to a neighbor who still has the dual control electric blanket she borrowed from you in 1987, and she hasn't washed it.

4. At any resort hotel, steal a mystery novel from a lounge chair while the owner is away getting a pina colada. Hide the book in a potted palm.

5. In the usually secluded mystery section of Waldenbooks, while no one is looking, rip out the last page of all the Agatha Christie novels.

6. With a laundry marker, cross out the author's name on all Sue Grafton books available at Barnes & Noble. Write in "Mr. Rogers."

7. With any mystery novel, skip to the end and see if you like the solution before wasting your time with all that character and setting and plot stuff.

8. Read John Grisham.

9. Develop and loudly proclaim a philosophy that any mystery novel containing more than 196 pages is "padded."

10. At a mystery convention, offer to buy drinks for every author in the bar. Be sure to wear a disguise and slip out the side entrance before you get the bill.

11. Smoke at author signings. Try to puff as close to the author's hair as possible. If you determine in advance that the author is herself a smoker and can't light up in a bookstore, offer her a drag.

12. Hack into the New York Times database and fool around with the bestseller list. That's what James Waller did, and look at all the fun he's had at our expense with The Bridges of Madison County.

13. Go to a mystery convention, and, during remarks by Patricia Cornwell, pretend you're dead. See if she can figure out what killed you.

14. Tell your favorite mystery authors that you really admire the way Anne Rice does signings, because she has plenty of imagination and arrives at the store dressed as Elvira and in a horse-drawn hearse.

15. On jury duty, bring and display prominently a copy of K is for Killer. Use a stopwatch to time how long you last in the jury pool.

Submitted by Polly Whitney, practicing so that, at the next signing I do, I can imitate Jack Nicholson's snoring in The Witches of Eastwick.