From A Mysterious Affair of Style, by Gilbert Adair:

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[from the dedication]

When... you proposed that I write a sequel, I immediately rejected the idea on the grounds that I've always made it a point of honour never to repeat myself. Later, however, it occurred to me that I had never written a sequel before.... [and] to write one now would represent another new departure for me.

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She was dressed... in a shapeless tweed suit that protruded in the places in which she herself protruded but also appeared to protrude in a few places on its own initiative.

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[Fictitious Stage Productions dept.]

Save the Last Valise for Me

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"I never smoke. I never drink. I never dance."

[...]

"How do you find the time to do all these things you never do?"

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"I'm afraid he's joined the Great Majority."

"What!" cried Cora. "You mean he's gone to Hollywood?"

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"He apparently plucked her from the chorus line in the new Crazy Gang revue."

[Remember the Crazy Gang? With something like "How's your father? Good bye!" to the tune of "shave and a haircut...," as a movie ending?]

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"Life is more like the Pictures than the Pictures are like Life--if you take my meaning--which, to be frank, I'm not at all sure I do myself."

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[Fictitious Movie Titles dept.]

An American in Plaster-of-Paris

The Yes Man Said No

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What about all those ordinary what's-their-names.... Not Alastair Farjeon, of course, who certainly wasn't a what's-his-name....

[By the way, I don't know whether 21st-c. period-mystery author Adair is paying homage to vintage author J. Jefferson Farjeon. I wondered whether the Farjeon surname alone would re-earworm me with JJJS, but the degrees of separation seem to have sufficed for keeping the earworm at bay. (And, hopefully, you're perfectly safe at this even greater distance.)]

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"Where other directors' thrillers often have twist endings, his have always had twist beginnings."

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"I have two or three really very juicy scenes where I not only get to chew up the furniture but spit it out."

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"It's a big nothing of a scene. It's not even a big nothing, it's a small nothing, it's a nothing nothing."

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[Nonexistent Hats dept.]

[He] wore a double-breasted Savile Row suit in flamboyant grey pin-stripes from whose breast-pocket he would repeatedly pull a handkerchief, perfumed and polka-dotted, to mop his brow with. If he'd been wearing a hat--a Panama by choice--you felt sure he'd never stop fanning himself with it.

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"Everybody hated it. When the curtain came down, it was so quiet you could hear a pin get up and walk out of the theatre."

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[Rebonjour dept.]

"Re-touché."

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"No pun intended, I promise you."

"And none taken, I'm sure."

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[Blank-Map Ellipsis (or, if you prefer, Empty Question) dept.]

"We-ll..."

"Yes?"

"...?"

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"On the dot--those were her words and she insisted I let you know they were in italics."

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After a moment--waiting for the silence, like applause, to fade away--Lettice continued.

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Their eyes met. The older man's eyebrows nodded.

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"one of those corkscrewy little cul-de-sacs whose houses seem to be leaning out of their own windows"

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