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unearths some literary gems.
***
In spite of the fact that she was highly paid for giving advice, that which she offered was probably no worse than her correspondents would have received from any other well-meaning, warm-hearted person.
***
The pattern of his tie was so enterprising that if she had not heard him speak, she might have presumed that he was an American.
***
"Tell me," said Alex, "does Miss Takahashi always say everything three times?"
***
"Nobbling you on the staircase to tell you things seems to be her only form of social relaxation."
***
Whether or not [the detective]...listened at those times if other people chose to speak to him, was difficult to know. He generally turned away from the speaker, giving him an occasional sideways glance, after which he would cock an eyebrow as if to register slight surprise at the speaker's existence. If he wanted a person to speak, he pointed a pencil at him.
***
"She's quite good at looking her suspicions."
"Looks can mean all sorts of things," said Daniel. "They're even more ambiguous than words, which are bad enough."
***
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unearths some literary gems.
***
He took a forkful of macaroni salad and chewed it suspiciously, if such a thing is possible.
***
I took another look at myself in the mirror, sighed (I'll bet even Beyoncé groans when she looks at herself in the morning, unless she pays someone to do that for her), and touched up my lipstick for the seventh time. If I actually could calm my stomach to the point that I bit into a muffin, I'd probably leave about an ounce of Pink Cognito on the top and bottom. I could kiss Portugal and still have my mouth covered.
***
[So the premise of this not-very-good book was that the author surrogate--oops I mean narrator-protagonist--is herself a mystery writer who is suddenly confronted by a real-life person who seems to be, and claims to be, her fictional protagonist come to life. Cute idea, though I have the feeling it's been done before, and anyway this was more often an annoying than an entertaining read. As you've seen, however, there were a few highlights, including the one below that required my explaining the premise here above. (:v>]
There were times I actually found myself wanting him to be the character I'd written, sprung from the bounds of his papery existence and existing entirely as the creation I'd envisioned. It was like having a movie made of one of my books, except that the movie followed you around and you could talk to it. And you didn't get any money.
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unearths some literary gems.
***
[He] goes to the opera till he's blue in the face.
***
[The most hyperpolite Brit ever?]
The message on my answering machine to invite me to lunch, went: "Could you bear to give me a ring if the idea of having lunch with me isn't absolute anathema to you?"
[...]
"Would you mind passing me the menu if it isn't the most frightful bore?" he said to me. Then: "Oh, how splendid!" to the waiter when he brought the sparkling water. "How frightfully kind!"
***
[Imaginary Hats dept.]
On our way out we saw a big man’s black hat lying in the corridor.
[….]
We both imagined this wretched man going around pompously, imagining he’d got his ludicrous hat on his head, and then going home and looking in the mirror and finding to his horror that he’d been strutting around all day just an ordinary person with a small, bald head.
***
"I know, darling!"
The "darling" just slipped out.
"I didn't mean 'darling, darling,'" I tried to explain...."It's a kind of...expression, that has come upon me at sixty like a kind of disease. My speech is peppered with darlings. Darlings, not dahlings with an 'h,'" I added. "There's nothing I can do about it."
***
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unearths some literary gems.
***
"Credit rating not up to snuff, she told me." Mrs. Wasserman looked stricken, as if her own credit rating were snuff-less.
***
Wiggins tilted the book from side to side in a paperback wave.
***
"What you been doing on your holiday?"....
"Been to eleven films in the last ten days. I thought I'd get it over with all at once."
***
She sat back, fell back, in her chair, holding the cheese puff aloft and seeming to address it, not Jury.
[Gesturing with animated objects, especially comestibles--and related business--is starting to feel like a "theme" in Martha Grimes.]
***
He was absolutely certain by the time he'd reached page fifteen that The Parrot and the Pickle [a nonexistent mystery novel by the previously mentioned nonexistent author Elizabeth Onions] was one of the books the monkeys had cast aside on their way to writing Hamlet.
[And I like how the hypothetical monkeys who would recapitulate Shakespeare, given infinite opportunity, have become actual monkeys who did.]
***
Professor Lamb had a short torso, and his red suspenders made it appear even shorter, as if they were yanking his waist up to mid-chest.
***
[A Baltimore cabbie-cum-tour guide objects to the fare's desire to visit the Poe house rather than the aquarium.]
"So what's interesting? It ain't like he kept giant sting rays."
[Maybe they should take I-95 to Providence and compromise on Lovecraft?]
***
"Except," Jury added, "that there were no such people." [I guess my "no such person" Google Books search missed all the plural nonesuches!]
***
Not setting it in Morocco was as good as not setting it anywhere else.
***
From somewhere came a sudden crash, and Macalvie turned from the phone to yell at someone. Noises off went with Macalvie.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
"Greg, your example would corrupt an archangel."
"Which, as you are emphatically no angel, arch or otherwise, is irrelevant."
***
"Hargest had a special 'thing' about Eurovision."
***
He wore a fine snow-white dragoon's moustache, and his eyebrows twisted upwards as though in sympathy.
***
He would arrange a debate on The Housewife and her Hat between the editor of a woman's magazine and the most recently wedded viscountess.
***
[Water Metaphorically Flowing under Specific Bridges dept.]
Since those days a lot of water had flowed under the bridges of Seine and Thames.
***
"Grown men really shouldn't be able to quarrel over dancing-girl troupes, or even over serious subjects like Greek Drama or Quiz Games."
***
Kate received him with enthusiasm tempered only by the requirements of make-up removal.
"I'm glad you're back," she said through a flurry of Kleenex.
***
"If Jane Hargest isn't as two-faced as they come, I'll eat the sort of hat Humphrey can't afford to buy me."
[I just checked the archives, and, indeed, the two previous twists on hat-eating also came from Val Gielgud.]
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Measure for Murder, by Clifford Witting:
***Nothing disorganises a concern so much--except, of course, the introduction of System--as the boss's son beginning in a junior position.***He had...scrabbled about taking measurements and jotting them down on the back of an envelope, which he afterwards lost.***Our producer was...a soft-spoken giant of a fellow, who...never got nearer to losing his temper than whistling "Good King Wenceslas" (whatever the season of the year) through clenched teeth.[Sure enough, as the story progresses and things become tense, there are a couple of allusions to the producer's GKW whistling.]***It was his normal habit to say everything twice in quick succession, but his orders to the company were given three times just as rapidly, as if with the foreknowledge that nobody would heed a thing said ony twice.***Phil Pearson's encomiums whipped up his flagging interest and transformed him into the keenest amateur that ever missed a cue.***Massive, hearty of manner, he had a deep, resonant, voice and, when amused (which was often), sounded like an amiable ogre laughing in a cave.***"Those are the opinions of Coleridge. When we remember that he wrote 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' we can safely accept his judgment."[...]"That has nothing to do with our present discussion"...."Neither does the Ancient Mariner....Or the albatross."***[This may be my favorite passage of all. The French turn of phrase really puts it over the top, imo!]And there was--how can I put it?--a certain awareness about her. I once made the acquaintance of an old green parrot. Its conversational range was limited, yet when it tilted its head and cocked a wicked beady eye at you, you got the feeling that, if only it chose, it could tell you a thing or two; that, as the French put it, il connut le dessous des cartes. Miss Lark in no way resembled a parrot, but sometimes there was the same tilt of the head and the same cock of the eye.***We had the place to ourselves, except for a solitary man at the other end of the room, with a newspaper propped against the water-jug, who chewed his food with the stolid concentration of a ruminating cow, and held his knife and fork as if he was riding a bicycle.[Bicycles, of course, are funny--especially out-of-context bicycles.]***"Not a square peg in a round hole, but a round peg not quite big enough to stop falling right through."***Although close on sixty, she darted around the house with the nimbleness of a schoolgirl, so that she frequently gave the impression of being in two places at once. For instance, after assuring her I had everything I required, I would leave her at one end of a passage--and, on reaching the other end, would find her waiting round the corner with the remark: "Because you've only got to ask, Mr. Tudor."[By the way, Tudor's nickname is "Turtle," which makes me think of Tooter Turtle of the cartoons.]***He...went down the hill in zig-zag fashion, jamming on his brakes at the end, as it were, of each zig. Our own descent...was much less like a music-hall turn.***Many times I tried to screw my courage to the sticking-place and make love to her, but my courage seemed to have no sticking-place.***She was what young women, older women, young men and older men all describe as a "nice girl"--for four different reasons.[But he doesn't specify what the four different reasons are.]***Mrs. Cheesewright went "tck-tck" more than once, but she would have gone "tck-tck" at anything.***It is always pleasant to make complete strangers laugh at one's remarks to one's friends.***"You won't be cross," I asked, "if on some appropriate occasion in the future--when you're in the middle of a game of tennis or having your hair done--I ask you to marry me?"***Then suddenly, with an almost audible click, the tone of the conversation changed.***It is the custom among solicitors, symptomatic, perhaps, of their elusive craft, to do business under any names but their own.***It was a pity that Mrs. Doubleday was just going by, for I collided with her and spoilt what would otherwise have been a most artistic exit.[Earlier on, he walked into the same lamppost twice in one evening.]***"I think not, halthough I saw him at about twenty-past eleven."[This instance of the reverse-dropped haitches that characterize Mrs. Doubleday's conversation was interesting because the glitchy type in this copy of the book had the unintended effect of making it look like the surplus h in "halthough" was stricken through for removal.]***"As you couldn't see your 'and in front of your face, I might 'ave been right on the 'eels of the Archbishop of Canterbury and not known it."[I don't think I've mentioned it before, but the Archbishop of Canterbury appears not infrequently in the books I read in this sort of far-fetched hypothetical role. I guess he's a little bit like a personified Timbuktu.]***[Turning a Cliche on Its Head dept. The character is saying that he prefers brunettes.]"When it comes to blondes, I'm no gentleman."***"She 'ad a sharp attack of la-di-da."***"You'd never find so much as a postcard from me in Mr. Ridpath's fan-mail."[I like the implication that a lukewarm fan would send a *postcard*.]***Nonsense as Fashion Statement dept."All rigged out in a red velvet dress and a bit of nonsense fixed round 'er head."***"I think she must have discovered the secret of perpetual emotion."***"What a snorter! 'A something or other beyond the reach of art.'"***"Besides Gough, whom I've called No. 3, two other people, Nos. 1 and 2, are involved.""You know I'm no good at figures," grumbled the Super. "Couldn't you have made them A, B and C?""It would have been too complicated," Charlton explained.***"You arranged for a representative of Messrs. Golightly & Farthingale to call on Miss Jones?""You got on to that, did you?" grinned Duzest. "A pretty piece of impromptu nomenclature, don't you think?""A Frogbaskett in the middle would have lent it distinction," replied Charlon judicially.***[Then there was this, as I discussed on Facebook.]In case anyone's keeping score, the vintage mystery novel that I'm currently reading has included, as of page 41, two metaphorical and mutually unrelated references to seals (the animal, not the emblem). First we are told that a troupe of seals, given the power of speech, could have recited some theatrical dialogue as well as the humans actually reciting it. Then, twenty pages later, we're told that a newly introduced character physically resembles a seal. I must say the necessity for a "given the power of speech" proviso seems rather to defeat the purpose of the former comparison; but I'm not here to quibble, I'm here to count metaphorical seals (counting the troupe as one).
Page 74, metaphorical seal #3: "It was a technically faultless performance, but with the perfection of a circus dog jumping through a hoop or a seal balancing a ball on its nose."
BUT WAIT! As the jokelore engineer said, "Our initial count was off." A mystery-fiction expert has drawn my attention to the earliest (documented) seal reference in this book—back in the prologue, before I began noticing or keeping track. In this passage, a different character apparently resembles "‘a breathless seal" when climbing stairs. So our REVISED METAPHORICAL-SEAL COUNT now stands at 4.
No seal references since page 74, and now, in the second half of the book, we have a different narrator. Perhaps the seal obsession was the NARRATOR's tic, rather than the author's! This would tie in with what the mystery expert told me, to wit, that she did not notice metaphorical seals in the other books she's read from this series (though she wasn't looking out for them, as far as I know).
However, if it's any consolation, I've just encountered a passage in which a character compares someone else to an "obstinate jellyfish." He is speaking to the detective, and we're informed by narrator #2 that "the simile appealed to [the detective]."
I've now finished the book, and the metaphorical-seal count stands at 4, unchanged since page 74. Thank you for joining me on this adventure! Facebook doesn't seem to offer a seal emoji, so I'll use a dophin and a dog, since a seal is sort of the "average" of those two animals.
***
[Bonuses: A character says "shenanachida" for "shenanigans"; this variant has no trace in Google. The same character uses "belladonna" to mean "prima donna."]
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unearths some literary gems.
***
The man allowed his monocle to fall, more or less of its own accord, to the full extent of its ribbon, where it swung, pendulum-wise, at the end of its moiré ribbon, till the law of Newton and gravity took over.
***
"What I possess...is the characteristic of the Complete Artist: I will do anything for money."
***
[This pedestrian passage presented my mind's eye with a fanciful--and much improved, imho--image, until I realized that "rowing" here meant quarreling, and not oaring. I'd been imagining one of those romantic boating picnics taken to the next level!]
Sanson and his wife were still rowing, as they had been continually since halfway through the expensive dinner that had been her birthday treat.
***
"With that kind of dough, he can pull up the drawbridge, lower the portcullis, shut himself in his ivory tower and cock a snook at the world. Or...he could buy himself a paradise island in the South Seas and cock his snook from there."
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Mr. Pinkerton at the Old Angel, by David Frome:
***
"Pamela Gwendoylyn Watkins, dau. of Sir Wathen Watkins Watkins."
***
[I didn't know (though Hilary did) that Rye's crooked chimney, as replicated in Tilling, really exists! However, you'll note that the claim below runs directly contrary to Benson's premise. The present book was published in 1939, whereas Benson, I see, was giving his version ("The expert artist would draw it rather more crooked than it really was...") at least as early as 1922.]
The little man stopped short by the house with the crooked chimney that everybody who paints comes to Rye to paint, they say because it is impossible to get the chimney any crookeder than it already is.
***
[Pathetic Fallacy dept., Seat-of-Trousers div.]
He shot out into the room on the surprised seat of his trousers with something of a crash.
***
["Throat" Is Too Vague dept.]
He stood there in the dark, his heart precisely where his epiglottis normally was.
***
[I never realized that a devil's advocate has to look right!]
He realized that as Devil's Advocate he cut a rather sorry figure, sitting up against the cold head of his bed, the covers drawn up to his chin.
***
Catching the image of himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, he felt sure for the first time of the precise appearance of a whited sepulchre.
***
Mr. Pinkerton took an enormous breath of relief, or rather a breath of enormous relief.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Swiss Family Manhattan, by Christopher Morley:
***
Although so young, Otto was a persistent arguer; he rarely assented without reservation to anything his brother said, and so often began his sentences with "Yes, but"--which he pronounced Yebbut--that the word had become his nickname.
***
"Dictate to me!" she cried at last. "I don't mind dying if I can take dictation."
***
[Mannequin dept.]
Like birds of paradise rich millinery idols perched in caves of glass, looked out in a bright fixity of simper.
***
I was no longer just the perplexed father of a castaway family and the conscientious breadwinner. I was a thoughtwinner.
***
[Things pick up when we meet a Jeremy Edwards female protagonist type called Gazelle(!). (I thought there might be a Giselle in Swiss Family Robinson, which this would be meant as a play on, but I found no evidence of that, so I think "Gazelle" is just pure whimsical aptness.)]
"I am usually the most conventional of men, but circumstances very extraordinary--"
"That's the kind of circumstances I like."
***
[Instead of messages in bottles...]
"So I considered," she said, "that in such an emergency it was more than ever desirable for us to get in touch with the more thoughtful class of the inhabitants. I could think of no more certain way of doing so than by throwing out some of your index-cards."
***
"O noble hyperbole, said I (addressing the Empire State Building), I will be worthy of thee!
[N.B. The parenthetical there is Morley's, not mine.]
***
It boasted "the largest Little Theatre in the world."
***
"Voltaire at Ferney, like an electric refrigerator secreting his crystalline cubes of clear reason!"
***
Congenially squeezed into Gazelle's yellow car, the Scrambled Egg, we three drove downtown to the address given us.
***
[Living Punctuation dept.]
The rising fragrance of Gretchen's admirable grilled kidneys or veal cutlets broiled in Gruyère put a period to my application. [I.e., his work came to a full stop.]
***
That is what a philosopher should be, a windshield wiper for humanity.
***
[Bonus: The nickname "Moonlight Saving," borne by a minor character who comes to life after dark.]
[Incidentally, I could find no literary evidence of those two dedicatees whom Morley calls "Practitioners of Laughter." Maybe he meant it literally, and they were professional first-night claquers!]
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unearths some literary gems.
Where's the emphasis?
1. Front cover: "MR. PINKERTON AGAIN/!/" (Only the exclamation point is italicized.)
2. "Half-title" page: "Mr. Pinkerton Again!" (Nothing is italicized.)
3. Title page: "Mr. Pinkerton Again!" (Entire subtitle is italicized.)
Also, WHY the emphasis? (Granted, subtitles are sometimes set in italics just for show, or so that they don't feel slighted by being in smaller type.) Why the astonishment? This was book 9 in the series, and at this point (1937) they'd been coming out with great regularity. I'm not sure that anyone would have been surprised at this stage of the game to find that David Frome had written about Mr. Pinkerton AGAIN(!). They might have been more astonished in 1934, when, according to Goodreads, THREE Mr. Pinkerton books were published within the year. However, books 4 through 8 all had Mr. Pinkerton's name in the primary title, so I can understand why they wanted to supplement the Pinkerton-deficient title of #9 with a subtitle that namechecked him. And "Mr. Pinkerton Again!" is more fun than just "A Mr. Pinkerton Book," right? And maybe we're just kind of excited about it. I suppose it might represent the attitude of Pinkerton's co-star, Humphrey Bull. Bull is the Scotland Yard inspector, and Pinkerton is his old civilian friend who is always popping up innocently but intricately in the midst of some tangled mystery that Bull is investigating. So there may be an implied "[Oh no,] Not" in front of "Mr. Pinkerton Again!"
From The Black Envelope, by David Frome:
***In the cinema people in his position usually took it on the lam. He would gladly have done so too, except that he had no clear notion, really, of what the lam was.***[Dr. Johnson Or Just Some Other Dr. Johnson dept.]"[The Brighton Pavilion is] dreadful, isn't it? Dr. Johnson said it looked to him as if St. Paul's had come to Brighton and pupped."[...]"I'm not interested in what your doctors say about anything!" the old lady snapped.[But there's more! Now, a chapter later, a tour guide is doing his spiel.]"Sidney [sic] Smith said it looked as if St. Paul's had come to Brighton and..."[So I did some quotation research on this. Smith is the standard attribution, though I found no evidence of a documented primary source or context for the quip, only people claiming he said it--so he probably didn't. (Incidentally, I also observed that Frome is not the only one who spells Sydney Smith's name wrong.) In any event, I love Frome's sly planting of mutually contradictory attributions among her characters.]***It was best to make haste slowly.[Ah, I see that making haste slowly is a "thing": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festina_lente]***[And this novel, which is set in Brighton and London, ends with a completely unexpected cameo by a proverbial farmer's daughter! Here Mr. Pinkerton, whose understanding of American idioms is limited to what he's been able to glean from the cinema, is speaking with Andy Read, an American friend, about the future of a fortune hunter, Quentin Sellers, who is now destined to work for a living. Pinkerton is sort of jokingly telling Read to tell Sellers that he's seen a suitable position advertised.]"And he hasn't got to have any particular training. Why, they need a traveller in portable water softeners..."Andy Read grinned."OK," he said. "OK for Mr. Sellers, that is.--But what does it make the farmer's daughter?"[And that's the last line of the story! Pinkerton, we are to assume, won't get the "farmer's daughter" allusion because it's presumably an Americanism (and a bit racy for the sheltered Mr. Pinkerton). So we just leave him there puzzling over it!]***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Pandora Lifts the Lid, by Christopher Morley and Don Marquis:
1. The map on the frontispiece shows an evidently fictitious, Janusesque "Thatcher's Island," whose profile includes two symmetrical peninsulas called West Whisker and East Whisker.
2. The book is dedicated to a *room*: "To Room 515, the Traymore"
3. Among the characters are a pair of twins who are "not only twins, but...facsimiles."
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Original Content Copyright © 2025 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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