Carl Green, Jr., also known as The Chameleon is the main antagonist of the Felicity Snell Mysteries novel "The Serial Sneak Thief". Green is a daylight robber of valuable collectibles and other items from the Ebenezer Twitchpurse Memorial Library in West Milbury, out for retribution for his father's career failures and eventually suicide.
History[]
Green's father, biologist Carl Bradley Green, Sr. hoped to get published to build a foundation for his career, but his books were primarily plagiarized material. Every publisher he went to constantly rejected his demands, and even after he paid a private publisher, Green, Sr., was rejected from his hometown's local library, the Ebenezer Twitchpurse Memorial Library. When he shot himself dead when his son was only twelve, Green, Jr., sought revenge by the time he became an adult. Targeting Green first let a ferret loose at the Pet Corner of the adjacent National History Museum, the ferret killing some rabbits, which is when Green stole multiple trophies from the office of Mr. Hayes, the chief of staff, using a box filled with straw he placed at the scene earlier. Then when soap opera star Elizabeth Christopher came to sign copies of her autobiography at the library's Adult Department, Green released multiple rats to have an opportunity to steal Christopher's expensive coat. In a separate event, he stole a vintage edition copy of Oliver Twist from the library. with no respect for the belongings he purloined, Green shot at the trophies with his shotgun for target practice, as well as sent a torn page with "Stop, thief!" written on it several times, with the message "I'll be back" cut out of other pages and glued on, to Felicity Snell, a librarian who had a previous line of work as a private investigator. She became actively involved in the investigation, and when "The Serial Sneak Thief" didn't last as a moniker for Green, Snell called him "The Chameleon" due to his inconspicuous presence during all of his thefts.
Snell collaborated with the staff, and volunteers she brought personally, to a murder mystery competition at the library that gathered the community together. The group of staff and volunteers, who were nicknamed the "Watchdog Squad", were instructed to survey the entire event, as it was all primarily a ploy to lure "The Chameleon" to the event in the hopes of apprehending him. Snell briefed the staff on the event, but they failed to prevent Green's latest theft. He found an excuse to attend the event by working as the personal chauffeur for Mary Ferrell, a snobby professional window dresser who was behind the staging of the fake crime scene for the contest. With distractions of letting loose a dog named Sweets, then luring a boy named Orville Grisson to the roof of the library to put him in danger, Green swiped a Henry Charles manuscript and gallery proofs for the library, gluing and writing "Ha! Ha! Ha!" all over numerous locations in the library as a brag. His plans were ruined when Snell found he the manuscript and the fake janitor's name tag he used to lure Orville hidden on the dummy at the setup. Stickers with "Ha! Ha! Ha!" written on them were found in his pocket, and the various witnesses of his past thefts identified him from his presence at the scenes. Green, shaken by the outrage, surrendered to arrest. The stolen belongings, no matter their condition, were found at his trailer, and he only confessed once Snell found documentation of his father's rejected book in the library's archives.