Message to Fennelosa:  All right, let's abort here, buy the ones we've scanned so far, and look for a bookshop with an intelligent-looking proprietor who says they know a lot about their stock.

Playing information games where they would have to make up a large amount of information very quickly will go better if Keltham can find somebody who'll function as an index into that information.

...the kid is (allegedly) not even the real bookshop manager.  Right then!

Message to Fennelosa:  All right, let's abort here, buy the ones we've scanned so far, and look for a bookshop with an intelligent-looking proprietor who says they know a lot about their stock.

Playing information games where they would have to make up a large amount of information very quickly will go better if Keltham can find somebody who'll function as an index into that information.

...the kid is (allegedly) not even the real bookshop manager.  Right then!

Message to Fennelosa:  All right, let's abort here, buy the ones we've scanned so far, and look for a bookshop with an intelligent-looking proprietor who says they know a lot about their stock.

Playing information games where they would have to make up a large amount of information very quickly will go better if Keltham can find somebody who'll function as an index into that information.

(If they were trying to get Keltham to go somewhere a putative Conspiracy puppet was suggesting he go, good luck with that!)

...the kid is (allegedly) not even the real bookshop manager.  Right then!

Message to Fennelosa:  All right, let's abort here, buy the ones we've scanned so far, and look for a bookshop with an intelligent-looking proprietor who says they know a lot about their stock.

Playing information games where they would have to make up a large amount of information very quickly will go better if Keltham can find somebody who'll function as an index into that information.

(If they were trying to get Keltham to go somewhere a putative Conspiracy puppet was suggesting he go, good luck with that!  Keltham didn't even notice whatever bait that was, but that's in part because he was treating that as putative scripted Conspiracy chatter anyways, in the world he needs to distinguish.)