So hard to do right; so easy to do like this:<\/p>\n\n
For an instant, I saw the golden ring on his drumming fingers. A five-pointed star was engraved on the ring that Dr Albert Fowler was no longer wearing when I found his body locked in the upstairs bedroom. Here was the missing piece in the puzzle.
\nThe revelation hit me like an ice-water enema.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nAnd now I suppose I will spend months looking for an opportunity to use this analogy in conversation. Better yet, in an interview. “What would you say, professor, to the results of this<\/em> experiment? Would you not say they hit your theory like an ice-water enema?”<\/span>
\nOr in Parliament: “Would my right honourable friend agree that the results of the latest polls must have hit his party like an ice-water enema?”<\/span><\/p>\n\nThe quote comes form an otherwise amusing bit of hokum called Falling Angel<\/em> by the American thriller writer William Hjortsberg, whose name raises an interesting question. How do Americans pronounce it? I know perfectly well how to pronounce it in Swedish, where the name means “Stag mountain” but I wouldn’t have clue how to say it in English. Jortsburg<\/span>?<\/p>\n\n
The best modern Chandler pastiche I know is still Loren D Estelman’s Whiskey River,<\/em> about Detroit in the prohibition. There are frozen lakes there, and assholes, but no frozen assholes.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So hard to do right; so easy to do like this: For an instant, I saw the golden ring on his drumming fingers. A five-pointed star was engraved on the ring that Dr Albert Fowler was no longer wearing when … Continue reading