MERSEYSIDE, England, June 17 (UPI) -- British thieves made a truckload of the new Harry Potter book disappear less than a week before the fifth tome in the series was to go on sale.
A trailer loaded with copies of the much-anticipated "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" was taken from a trading estate in Merseyside, England, Sunday. The empty trailer was found Tuesday in Manchester without its load.
The theft comes just days before the new book is due to go on sale Saturday in Britain.
A spokesman for the Merseyside said, "The trailer contained the new Harry Potter book. We are not sure about the intended destination at this stage."
"We think they would have been delivered to our Wigan depot and then on to stores across the north of England," a spokesman for the supermarket chain Asda told the London Telegraph. "Although it is a lot of books, we have ordered around 500,000 copies so it shouldn't go short."
