I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that, despite all the research I did for Boxer, Beetle, I never bothered to find out what Anophthalmus hitleri looks like in real life. But Natascha Geier, a producer for the German TV channel NDR, is far more diligent than me, and retrieved the photo above from the Zoologische Staatssammlung München. As you can see, it looks nothing like the beetle on the cover of the book, and also nothing like the beetle I describe in the text – disappointingly unintimidating, in other words.

By the way, since Boxer, Beetle has just got the last print review it's likely to get until the paperback comes out, here is a reminder that I have been compiling all the reviews – and of course by 'all the reviews' I mean short, representative extracts from all the favourable reviews and shorter, unrepresentative extracts from all the unfavourable ones – in this post.