unearths some literary gems.
***
[Oxymoron dept.]
"I'll just take down a few general particulars."
***
"Now I came in here for something what was it?"
By this time, we were both a bit breathless. In fairness to the compositors, I ought to add that her ladyship delivered that last sentence exactly as it is printed.
***
This was the most charming voice I had ever heard.... To hear it was like getting into an old and valued pair of slippers.
***
I gave a hearty laugh and discovered when I stopped that I had nothing to take its place.
[...]
The going became much easier after that and the silence took itself off, probably in high dudgeon.
***
[Overly Precise Imprecision dept.]
"What time did you get to Deeptree Corner?"
"I do not know exactly, sir, but I should say that it was about two minutes after five-and-twenty to nine."
***
[You may remember Witting as the author who, in a book I read some weeks back, repeatedly compared—or rather, whose narrator-protagonist repeatedly compared—other characters to seals. So, in this book, narrated by a different first-person protagonist, I encountered a comparison of somebody to a hen—which wouldn't be remarkable in itself, except that the narrator can't move on without making a more general, apparently discursive pronouncement about it.]
Didcott smiled at me. He seemed to be in the sunniest of tempers, like a rather mature hen, which has laid something extra special in the way of double-yolks. In many ways, he was very much like a hen. [my emphasis]
[This assertion that Didcott was "very much like a hen" in "many ways" is left entirely unsubstantiated. What a tease!]
[And meanwhile, in another book by a different author that I'm reading concurrently, an incidental hen has been compared to one of the minor characters.]
***
If a thriller is called Low Tide, The Eighth Heaven, or Salmon and Shrimp, you tend to pass it over...
[While we're on the subject: This novel offers a lot of titles of (presumably) nonexistent books, songs, and plays. Not all of them are interesting, but here are some highlights.]
The Corpse in the Copse
Muffin Murder [This is a doubly nonexistent book, because "Muffin Murder" is a title erroneously requested by a bookshop customer seeking a work whose correct title is The Crime at Crumpetts. So, for those keeping score, The Crime at Crumpetts is a nonexistent book that does exist in the world of Murder in Blue; while Muffin Murder is nonexistent even *within* the world of Murder in Blue.]
"The Week That Aunt Eliza Came to Stay" [a music-hall song]
