Does Life imitate Art or Vice Versa?

More than thirty years ago a school bus filled with children set out from one small town to another. One side of the road was lined with precipitous hills and cliffs. On the other side was a long lake so a guard rail ran the length of the road. There were no side roads or any spots where a vehicle could pull over.
And yet the bus disappeared along the way. The obvious thing was checked first and there were no breaks in the guard rail. Local, state and federal police were totally mystified.
Then one newspaper reporter covering the event told of reading a book many years earlier. That book, The Day the Children Vanished, was written by then well-known mystery writer Hugh Pentecost. The story featured the exact same scenario down to the last detail.
Everyone rushed to find a copy of the book, but it was long out of print. The publisher hurried it back to the presses and in little more than a week it was in every bookstore in the country. It quickly zoomed to the top of the bestseller lists.
So here was a case in which life definitely imitated art.
The reverse is often true, which is way some particularly grisly crime will inspire several writers to crank out nearly identical stories. There have even been cases where two different publishers released books with the same title at the very same time. The Watcher comes to mind.
Not only did the plot of Hugh Pentecost's book fit the story of the children in every detail, the solution to the enigma proved to be identical to that in the book. When a writer sits down and begins hitting the keys he/she can never be certain where his/her brainchild may eventually lead. I would imagine in this case it led to some suspicious cops knocking on Pentecost's door. It also led to his bank account growing considerably fatter.

I wonder if his book was a premonition or a look into the future presented in book form? Hmmm.... interesting.

Thanks for sharing, Dick.

It was a conventional mystery, Sue.

Well, Dick I posted to this. I don't know if you got the response or even replied so I will try again.

When you say conventional mystery are you meaning a mystery just written for entertainment such as Agatha Christie? Or ... a mystery written for entertainment that has more in it such as Jules Vernon?

I did reply, Sue, but it's somewhere out there in cyberspace.
The Day the Children Vanished was quite conventional, an Agatha Christie type of whodunit. Hugh Pentecost only wrote that type, no sci-fi, occult or anything of the sort. He did write very straightforward mainstream novels under his real name, Judson Phillips, but was best known for his mystery short stories. I imagine he was the most surprised man on earth when kidnappers used his plot from many years earlier.

Thank you, Dick, for your repost. I appreciate it!

I will have to look into his writing.

I'm amazed. At least 75 people have read this and not a one has asked the solution to the mystery, which was the same as in the book. Or is everyone so smart they figured it out for themselves?

Dick,
I have read so many Agatha Kristi books that I must have read that at one time. However, I don't know or don't remember what happened.

I was reading your post for the point you were striving for and not for the plot of the actual case.

I think when two completely different dynamics are placed in the same arena, usually only one gets picked up. At least it looks that way in this situation. Care to tell us how it turned out?

I thought the "mystery" was such a mystery that it remained a mystery.

Is the schoolbus in the lake?

No, it's not in the lake. The kidnappers had a tractor-trailer rig with a ramp waiting for the bus to arrive. It then was driven into the trailer and off it went. I wish I could recall for certain but I'm almost positive the kidnappers were caught.