OK, as a newbie I didn't know about the 500 other threads on the topic. But it could have been predicted, I agree.
Here's a little "dream-casting" -- if you could go back in time about 30 years and have Abe Vigoda from about 1975 behind the counter of Isher's, I think that's be nifty-keen!
BTW -- In the early books, Abe was in his middle fifties. All of a sudden, in GATEWAYS, supposedly 18 months-2 years after THE TOMB, he's on the "wrong side of 60."
Mark Alfred
http://markssuperblog.blogspot.com/
There is a right and a wrong in the universe,
and most of the time that distinction is not
hard to make.