The book’s enormous scale becomes central to the piece. With 788 pages, its thickness allows for a carving process that behaves almost like geology, revealing strata of language rather than soil. By cutting gradually through the text, the dense mass of crime-fiction entries is reshaped into layered terrain, resembling eroded cliffs or an archival/archaeological excavation. Each slice exposes fragments of narrative—names, crimes, plot summaries—compressed together and rendered unreadable as they recede into depth. The text collapses into topographical patterns, suggesting that the accumulation of stories—violence, mystery, human complexity—forms a kind of cultural sediment.

Nothing is added; the final form emerges only by removing material. This subtractive method mirrors the way fiction distills reality, stripping away detail to reveal underlying structure. Here, however, the structure is physical and tactile: the encyclopedia becomes a sculptural archive of its own content.