For nearly 30 years, customers stepped through the door of Book Carnival and into a world created by owner Ed Thomas, a place where hard-boiled detectives, tea-sipping sleuths and cagey cops pursued killers, cons and creeps. Fictionally, of course. Thomas was almost always behind the counter, open book in hand (he read the way other people breathe) surrounded by stacks of the just-finished and the about-to-begin.