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unearths some literary gems.
From Rex Stout:
"Am I too circumstantial?"
"No," Fred said. Whether he knew what "circumstantial" meant or not, he thought Wolfe couldn't be too anything.
***
"A genius can't be bothered with just plain work like having someone tailed. He has to do stunts. He has to take a short cut. Anybody can get a rabbit out of a hat, so he has to get a hat out of a rabbit."
***
"Why don't you ask me what I want?" [she says]
"I'm putting it off because I may not have it."
"That's nice. I like that. That's a good line, only you threw it away. There should be a pause after 'off.' 'I'm putting it off ... because I may not have it.' Try it again."
***
"You see, Falstaff? Didn't I tell you?"
She had told him absolutely nothing.
***
To watch him consider I had to make an effort to forget his shiny dome and concentrate on his features. It would have been simpler if his eyes and nose and mouth had been on top of his head.
***
Next to Wolfe . . . was . . . a tall skinny guy with . . . a thin tight mouth that was just a hyphen between his bony jaws.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Lawrence Block:
By then they were in the office and the great man was on the telephone. I couldn’t tell who was on the other end of the line or what they were talking about, because all Haig said was “Yes” and “No” and “Indeed” and, at last, “Satisfactory.” For all I could tell he had called the weather bureau and was talking back to the recording.
***
From Rex Stout:
"What I thought, maybe you're not eccentric any more."
"Certainly I'm eccentric. Who isn't?"
***
From Case with Four Clowns by Leo Bruce:
His fair fluffy hair stood out around a prematurely bald spot. It looked like a halo which had been put on like a bowler-hat instead of being worn serenely untethered.
***
From Archie Goodwin:
Wolfe wiggled a finger. That was regression--I just looked it up. He had quit finger-wiggling a couple of years back.
***
From Death and the Dutiful Daughter, by Anne Morice:
The protest which had sprung to my lips had to spring backwards again because there was an interruption.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Leo Bruce:
"We've always called her Bonny. Short for Bon Mot, you see."
***
[A little later, "Bonny" chides her relative for using] "that old nickname.... Nobody has used it for a century. My Bonny's gone over the ocean, in fact."
***
"Mumble, Gray and Mumford of Booty Street, Bloomsbury."
***
Mr. Lofting just now was busy with a youngish man wearing one of those silly little caps which looked as though it had been made for H. G. Wells to wear for cycling as a young man.
***
"And he shouted himself out of the building."
***
From Leo Bruce's A Case for Sergeant Beef:
"Boys," he said. "Would you like to help me catch a murderer?"
He pronounced the word as though he were a comedian giving an imitation of an old-fashioned melodrama, dragging out the first syllable through a series of vowels.
***
Chatto made that interesting sound usually reproduced by novelists as "Pshaw!"
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unearths some literary gems.
From a Sgt. Beef mystery:
***
She was, she now explained, glued to the spot. Her heart was going in a manner which she described as “fit to burst,” while at the same time, and rather confusingly, she didn’t know whether she was standing on her head or her heels. A feather, she assured us, would have been sufficient to send her prostrate. But it was fortunate that these metaphors, however mixed, had come into play, for they kept her there to see something else.
***
“It’s time,” announced Beef, “that we interviewed a parson.”
“A parson?” I repeated, with the air of surprise that is expected of me. “Why a parson?”
“Comic relief,” said Beef; “must have a parson. Wouldn’t be a case without a parson.”
“But you can’t just go off like that and interview a parson.”
“I don’t see why not,” said Beef. “I’ve noticed you enjoy writing about them.”
***
We drove to some offices in a street off High Holborn and saw the name Starling and Nicholson on the plate at the door. I was relieved to see that I should not have to produce that onerous form of humour at the expense of solicitors firms’ names, and that this one was content with a curt partnership instead of any form of repetition.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Rex Stout:
***
"No." He meant every word of it.
***
[Arbitrary non-round-number percentages dept.]
At least 91.2 per cent of the district attorneys in the State of New York think they would make fine tenants of the governor's mansion in Albany.
***
"You're at liberty to tell me to go climb a tree if you find the question ticklish. I might add that I would be at liberty to climb a pole instead of a tree."
***
Archie has found some rocks that might yield evidence, but he's lecturing himself about how impractical it will be to home in on it...
***
Good for you, I thought, you've made one hell of a discovery and now you're a geologist. All you have to do now is put every damn rock under the glass, and along about Labor Day you'll be ready to report. Ignoring my sarcasm, I went on looking.
***
"If Wolfe had intercepted me to tell me to type for him a summary of the headway made during the week, it wouldn't have delayed me more than ten seconds. I could merely have stepped into the office for a blank sheet of paper and handed it to him--or, if he wanted it in triplicate, three sheets."
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unearths some literary gems.
From Edgar Box:
***
"Mrs. Veering had changed from calm rational matron to Niobe, weeping over her children, if that's the one who wept over her children."
***
From Too Many Clients, by Rex Stout:
***
"It went on for minutes, and all he said was 'No' nine times. When he hung up I said, 'Just a yes man.'"
***
From Close Quarters, by Michael Gilber:
***
"Mrs. Judd?" he suggested, without apparent reflection.
"I was coming to her," said the Dean reluctantly. Rather in the manner of one who dis-cupboards a tiresome skeleton.
***
The arrangement of the south side of the Close was particularly gratifying to an orderly mind. Big house, little house, big house, little house. Canon, minor canon, canon, minor canon. Like a huge ecclesiastical sandwich with alternate layers of jam and cream.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Leo Bruce:
He was on mutual boring terms with most of the town.
***
Young barmen were employed to assist her.... She called them all Fred, ignoring any hopes they might voice of keeping their own names. [This predates the Pythons and "Bruce," btw.]
***
"'Mr Raydell,' I said, 'you will please remove that beast at once and never bring it into my bar again. I'm surprised at you doing such a thing.' 'It's only an ocelet,' he said. 'Only an ocelot--that's quite enough, I should think,' I told him. 'If you don't take it away immediately I shall call the police. I won't have ocelets in my bar!' 'There's only one,' said Mr Raydell. 'I don't care if there is one or fifty,' I told him. 'It's the principle of the thing.'"
***
"What would you say to ocelot attacking you in a bar in England?" he asked stertorously.
"I shouldn't speak to it," said Carolus."
***
"That of course makes nonsense." [I didn't know you could make nonsense, the way you can make sense!]
***
"At a club called the Surly Tapster."
"The boisterous individual with the bald head and monstrous moustache who had greeted us so heartily on our arrival had become a sagging and weary man. Even the moustache looked lifeless."
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unearths some literary gems.
From Edgar Box:
***
I have a theory that I think best shortly after I wake up in the morning. Since no very remarkable idea has ever come to me at any time, to prove or disprove my theory, I can happily believe that this is so and my usual plodding seems almost inspired to me in these hours between waking and the clutter and confusion of lunchtime.
***
"An armed camp," I murmured to myself, in Bold Roman.
[More of his typographical whimsy--among other things--can be found in the attachments.]
***
[Someone Should Write a Book dept.]
I decided that it was time someone wrote a handbook for adulterers.
[Cf. the film Guide for the Married Man]
***
"First, Lee's death... then the will, that dreadful will." She shut her eyes a moment as though trying to forget a million dollars... since this is not easily done, she opened them again.
***
I told her that the next few days would have to be lived through, the sort of reassurance which irritates me but seems to do other people good, especially those who do not listen to what you say.
***
"'For who would fardels bear....'" boomed Miss Pruitt, recognizing my allusion to him whom they call "the bard" in political circles. She fardeled on for a moment or two; then, her soliloquy done, "It's possible you're right," she said.
***
After an hour of this, everyone shifted positions, as often happens with a group in civilized society: a spontaneous rearrangement of the elements to distribute the boredom more democratically.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Rex Stout:
***
"I turned and marched out, chin up, with my ego patting me on the back."
***
"You mean--she--they--it--we"
"That's one way of putting it."
***
"No, thank you. Beer likes me, but I don't like it."
***
I have never seen a balder man, and his hairless freckled dome had a peculiar attraction. It was covered with tiny drops of sweat, and nothing ever happened to them. He didn't touch them with a handkerchief, they didn't get larger or merge or trickle, and they didn't dwindle. They just stood pat. There was nothing repulsive about them, but after ten minutes or so the suspense was quite a strain.
***
If I had actually seen the last of Nero Wolfe, it was a damn sad day for me, there were no two ways about that, and if I got a lump in my throat and somebody walked in I would just as soon show him the lump as not. But what if it was Wolfe himself who walked in? That was the trouble. Damned if I was going to work up a fancy lump and then have him suddenly appear and start crabbing about something.
***
“You thought it would be funny to have a talk with Rackham, and it may be all right this time, but some day something that you think is funny [ . . .]”
Only after he had gone did it occur to me that that wouldn’t prove it wasn’t funny.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Robert Goldsborough:
***
[Maledicta dept.]
"He strung a series of expletives together, none of which can be used on vanity license plates in any state."
***
"I'm afraid that you and Nero Wolfe are really going to have to pull a rabbit, or at least a hamster, out of a hat this time to construct a halfway-believable murder scenario."
***
"Afternoon." A deep voice stretched it to four or five syllabes, rather than the conventional three. [...]
"Afternoon," I countered, making no attempt to elongate the word. I know my limitations.
***
Entering, I found myself in a reception area manned by a strawberry blonde with a well-shaped nose who was busy driving an electric typewriter.
***
"I'd sure as hell like to scoop the argyle socks off those arrogant bastards who run the fat, self-satisfied daily over in the next county."
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unearths some literary gems.
From Stage Fright, by Gillian Linscott:
***
The Crispin is a small theatre wedged apologetically into a side street near Charing Cross station.
***
His eyebrows had that little lift to them that makes a person look clever even if he isn't.
***
[The American-born wife of an English aristocrat talks about storming out of the dining room when fed up with her husband.]
"The trouble was, I was so blazing mad I'd forgotten that when the hostess walks out all the other women get up and walk out with her. And would you believe that's just what they did, right in the middle of dessert? There I was, out on the terrace..., and eleven English ladies in formal dress trailed after me, wondering what they were supposed to do next."
[Later on, it's explained that the aristocrat is baffled as to how to react when an airplane carrying his wife and her presumed lover crash-lands on his property--because there's no social "precedent" for how one behaves in that particular situation.]
***
with a dazed look on his face, like Hamlet who's just been told that soliloquies are out of fashion
***
["I'm not sure your metaphor really works, but I like it anyway" dept.]
If London has a Bohemia I suppose Bloomsbury is it, but at eleven o'clock on a November night, with a few street lamps and bare plane trees, it looked as carefree as a frozen dishcloth.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Ellery Queen:
***
"DeWitt Alistair" sounded like a made-up name in a third-rate play played by a fourth-rate company. But it happened to be Alistair's legal moniker, which he used only when the mark needed a particular kind of softening up. As it had turned out, he would have been better advised to use something that sounded as if it came out of Pilgrim's Progress, like John Repentance or Reuben Disappointment.
***
From Old Scores, by Aaron Elkins:
[The story hinges on a questionable painting that was allegedly discovered in a junk shop in Paris. How do you one-up a junk shop in Paris, humorwise--and twice over? Like this!]
"Where'd he find this one, at a garage sale in Toulouse?"
***
["Talking to the chopped liver" dept.]
He was at this moment devoting his attention to the /pâté de campagne/... grumbling in an undertone to himself, or maybe to the pâté, as he spread it on a slice of bread. Listening to Lorenzo for too long affected different people different ways, and talking to the chopped liver didn't really seem that extraodinary.
***
"Why has he kept them a secret?"
He paused to eye us all, one by one. No one offered an answer. We knew a rhetorical question when we heard one.
***
[So that's what those are for!]
We found him standing before the canvas just the way he had last night: his big head thrown back, his hands behind him, clasping his elbows. He was wearing a scruffy, yellowish brown tweed jacket with leather elbow patches (to protect against all that elbow-clasping?)....
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unearths some literary gems.
From Murder at Midyears, by Marion Mainwaring.
***
[Department of Non-Words]
Miss Gaw let out an explosive sound which was suppressed before it took shape as a word.
***
[Department of Decontextualized Mittens]
A red angora mitten lay on the seat.
[The story also includes a gratuitous reference to English muffins.]
***
[from a bit where someone is reading out a proof for correction]
"Capital he is somewhat like a salamander comma and lives in the flame of love...."
***
a square short man with a florid face, sleek as a platitude
***
the knobbed and begargoyled chair he had offered
***
"They must return it to me at once," replied Younghusband, glaring at Sampson, who seemed to have become for him a convenient symbol of They.
[Btw, Younghusband's first name is Noah, and he's upwards of ninety years old.]
***
"She was like nothing so much as a thick, comfortable Christmas candle."
[My math could be wrong, but I have a feeling that--apart from candles in the wind--it's rare to see someone compared to a candle.]
***
"The sociologists call it... 'cementing college-community relations.'"
"Why do they always 'cement' relations?" sighed Miss Dixon fastidiously.
Mitchell explained [Rhetorical Questions Answered dept.], "Why, it's a figure of speech, Miss Dixon. 'Relations' is an abstract noun, whereas--"
Jill interrupted quickly. "I've always wanted to see a Sociological Relation. I picture it as a sort of giant jellyfish."
"Don't tell the police that," said Mary Gaw, "or they'll start hunting for it."
[and a little later in the same scene]
"The police bureau must be the repository of many secrets.... Can anyone tell me why secrets are invariably kept in repositories?"
"One of my favorite words, 'repositories,'" Cohn said sentimentally.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Death of a Cozy Writer, by G. M. Malliet:
***
Jim had decided to give the customers what they wanted. What they wanted, apparently, were striped red velour seat coverings and antique farm implements suspended from the ceiling. The place now looked like a cross between a Victorian brothel and a cowshed.
***
"I have no money, you know that. At least, not the sort needed to buy someone off. I doubt I could buy off a poodle."
***
[Author Shows Off Her Erudition in a De Facto Footnote dept.:]
"She got off scot free for that [crime committed in Scotland]."
"Please, no puns, Sergeant. Even though, as I understand it, scot free has nothing to do with Scotsmen."
***
[The funniest character in this book, which is set in England, is an American who tries too hard to talk like a Brit. As far as I know, "fish and chips" is *not* British slang for "baloney" (i.e., nonsense), but this American named Jeffrey Spencer, quoted below, thinks otherwise.]
"Baloney. Or as you might say, fish and chips."
***
[And here's what the protagonist has to say about Jeffrey:]
"I imagine he came here to search for his roots. With a name like Spencer he's bound to climb up several wrong branches of the family tree."
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unearths some literary gems.
From Catriona McPherson:
There comes a point when cheerfulness shades into inanity and young Jamesie had found it and set up his stall there.
***
From Jon L. Breen's "The House of the Shrill Whispers":
If we were characters in a novel instead of characters in a short story, I'd discourse with you at appropriate length about the foolishness and absurdity of characters in fiction pretendin' they're real.
***
From Ellery Queen's The Finishing Stroke:
It turned out a huge sprawl of a house, of incredible spread, coming to a giant peak--a two-story-and-attic so broad it looked sat upon.... The whole monster was thickly nested in shrubs, an Ancient Mariner of a house with a Galway beard.
***
[Doing the Math dept.]
"I conclude a [romantic] triangle."
"I'm not helping you with your math, Mr. Queen."
***
["We'll take that as a compliment" dept.]
"December twenty-fifth through the night of January fifth--Christmas through what's officially known as Twelfth Night--that makes a holiday party of twelve days, Ellen."
"What of it?"
"Look around. Twelve people in the party. Doesn't that strike you as interesting?"
"Not in the least," Ellen retorted. "What a peculiar mind you have."
***
Chapter V.... In Which a Summerhouse Sets the Scene for a Winter's Tale....
***
She looked as if she were tryinig to get off her horse and remain in the saddle at the same time.
***
["Using up all the e's" dept.]
Mrs. Brown eeked every time she laid eyes on him.
***
"Aha!" Ellery said. "And oho!"
***
[Exotic Mild Oaths dept.]
"I'll be double-dyed in Danbury."
***
"A whale of a red herring, you might say."
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unearths some literary gems.
From Leo Bruce's Death of Cold:
He found the bathing-hut attendant a middle-aged man wearing a blue jersey from which a thin and sinewy neck protruded to blossom into a rather startling face. This was pale, or seemed so in contrast to a sudden crimson nose....
***
She'd have taken her bathing-dress off altogether and walked about like a statue if I'd have let her.
***
"We've had instructions from the highest quarters that no further investigation is necessary or in the public interest."
"That's fine. But, you see, there are no highest quarters for me.... Highest quarters have always seemed to me rather silly."
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unearths some literary gems.
From Ellery Queen's The Greek Coffin Mystery:
***
his dark vandyke pointed accusingly at the floor
[And, describing a different character within the same paragraph:]
buried in a study as deep and brown as his beard
[Who knew that brown studies showed different *degrees* of brownness!]
***
"Khalkis... said, in these exact words: 'Before you leave remind me to call Barrett's and order some new ties like the one I'm wearing'.... The verbal italicization is mine."
[I.e., the verbal italicization is Ellery's--Ellery the character, that is, not Ellery the author(s).]
***
"The best possibility is Mrs. Sloane, although it's true that there doesn't seem to be any reason why she should inform against her own husband--"
"An acute parenthesis," drawled Ellery.
***
Ellery proved himself a philosopher and went to sleep.
[I think, in the context, this means he was able to remain "philosophical" about a setback and not let it keep him up... but I like the (un?)intentional auxiliary suggestion that dozing off is typical of what philosophers do.]
***
She took a deep breath, and the smoke dribbled out of her lovely mouth like punctuation marks as she talked.
***
This was serious, and the old man's nose lengthened and his jaw snapped in a manner that boded ill for the sergeant.
[I didn't realize that becoming dissatisfied with an employee's conduct could make the nose grow! I thought it was only lying that did that!]
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unearths some literary gems.
From a Charlotte and Aaron Elkins novel:
He charged off looking for Donny like a bull hunting for a china shop.
***
(Who Needs Context? dept.):
"Cosmic forces would have to take a back seat to coffee and pancakes."
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Widening Stain by Morris Bishop:
***
"Put it under Education and you can't go wrong." Miss Gorham smiled to herself. That was the sort of little joke she enjoyed. The best little jokes are plain statements of fact.
***
"They weren't talking very loud. But I did hear one thing. She called him a papoose."
"A what?"
"A papoose. You know, Indian baby."
"But that doesn't make sense!"
"I didn't say it made sense. I said she called him a papoose."
***
[Department of Anthropomorphized Clocks]
As the two stepped out through the wide French windows, the great clock of the Library cleared its throat, struck ten mournful strokes, and sighed.
***
"[Golf] is an introspective game. In any other game.... one extroverts, to the good of one's soul."
[First time I've seen "extrovert" as a verb!]
***
She put on her luncheon face and strolled to the Union.
***
[Magic Words Dept.]
"'Hickory, dickory, dock' is in limerick form, and is probably very ancient. It suggests in its wording an old gypsy spell, which begins: 'Ekkeri, akai-ri, you kair-an.' And that suggests the numerals in Sanskrit, and also the very ancient Anglo-Cymric score, by means of which the shepherds still count their sheep."
***
"It had the right rhyme-scheme, a a b b a, but lines three and four were the same length as lines one, two, and five. I had to tell her it was an improper limerick."
***
As [the operatic singer] questioned whether or not she should wake the hotly burning lover.... her voice assumed a thrilling, penetrating quality that would have roused anyone else, though he were dozing in the lobby.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Ellery Queen:
The lobby was jammed, and a peacock's tail of eyes regarded him with curiosity.
***
Flapdoodle, with onions on the side.
***
He was christened Aubrey, as in C. Aubrey Smith, rest his stiff-upper soul.
***
"I wonder what the blonde's got up her sleeve."
"I'm glad somebody has something up something," Ellery said.
***
When he spoke his voice was resonant, his diction perfect, his accent Harvard--somewhere between beginning-senior and postgraduate consistency; such a voice must have behind it entire walls of morocco-bound volumes.... In the midst of his performance, [he] gave her a broad wink which detracted not, by the shadow of a subjunctive, from it.
***
The Inspector... gave him half a grin, the left half.
***
"Where do you want to check me next?"
"Walt's room."
"We searched it like Maxwell J. House looking for the last drop."
***
[Blank "map" dept.]
The old man's face was a sight to behold. For just as all the combined rays of the spectrum reflect to the eye the color white, so all the Inspector's emotions--stupefaction, self-castigation, professional chagrin, anger at subordinates and half a dozen others--produced an expression of total blankness.
***
[Elusive Expletives dept.]
He stumped into his study, stubbed his toe, groped for a curse word....
***
Ellery arrghed and clapped the book shut. That's what you get when you do bird-dogging for analogies! They strike close enough to make a noise, but then they go ricocheting off into the irrelevant.
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