No. 1251: The winners

Jaspistos reports.' Competitors were asked for an extract from a detective story in which the sleuth is Robin Thin, 'a bumb- ling, egocentric, effeminate pseudo- intellectual who is an embarrassment to his father's agency'.

'Not tonight, Josephine. We have un petit crime on our lilywhite hands. Do you not see the Levi-Straussian Ur-plot of this slaughterette? Does pretty Cock Robin have to tell you everything? It's an urban enactment of, the Oresteia.' Gerard Ben- son's Thin, high camp amid low life, was fairly representative of the odd figure you created for me, who was dressed variously in 'deerstalker and peach Dralon jeans', 'a powder-blue three-piece mohair and lilac silk necktie', and 'an elegant two-piece, cut with matador shoulders, in ventre-de-faun crêpe-de-chine'. I wish I knew how Dashiell

Hammett handled him. The winners printed below get £10 each, and Basil Ransome-Davies has the last bonus bottle of Carlos III Selected Brandy. Our heartfelt thanks go to Pedro Domecq for having so generously provided such splendid extra drink over the last three months.

Dad was at his desk. I wished to God he wouldn't wear those harlequin socks with his business suit. He looked like he'd been attending a funeral on a golf course.

'Well, son,' he said, 'this is the big one. And when the going gets tough, the tough get going.'

I tried to gaze at the wall, but only caught the eye of a hideous portrait of Dale Carnegie look- ing as though he were about to lay an egg. Desperate, I reached for a cigarette.

'Put that pastel-coloured thing away!' he roared. 'You're not at a fag cocktail party.'

Well, I swear to God. You'd think a person would have some respect for another person's in- dividuality.

'Listen,' he continued, 'I'm giving you one last chance to prove yourself. So don't foul up. You're going after Wilhelm Grunewohl. Forger, Plagiarist, arch-criminal, master of disguise.'

So that was it. Still, as Proust wrote, a power- ful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it. A swift manicure and I was on my way.

(Basil Ransome-Davies) 'Please,' said Mamie. Her voice was like tickly underpants. 'All Mamie wants is your pa's little notebook. Just one teeny-weeny peep.'

Her lips looked small, hot and swollen, like half-cooked chipolata sausages.

`Just one-teeny-peep—' He could feel her teeth massaging his earlobe. Her perfume played pinball in his brain.

'But,' he squeaked, 'we were going out tonight. To try the Giovanni at the Met.'

'Spaghetti makes Mamiewamie puke. Robby, honey, please ...'

The telephone drooped like an under-watered daffodil. Suppose he called his analyst?

'The choice,' he murmured, 'is between sym- bolically murdering my father-figure and neurotically rejecting experience.'

Mamie sat up.

'Who said anything about sticking the guy on a shiv?'

'Why —' 'I get it! You're working for Battisti! You jerk—' The room spat her out like a mouthful of cheap champagne. Robin coughed palely. Perhaps it was all for the best. He could always go with his mother.

(Richard Parlour) So, I looked about as chic as a python in a powder-room. Pappy had lipped it that the dame had stones that needed taking care of. I asked her about it. 'Gall,' she said briskly. I was as surpris- ed as a cummings fan coming on a capital letter. 'It ain't gall, lady,' I murmured in a dulcet tone. It shatters Chateauneuf at fifty paces. 'It ain't gall, it's my job.' Her husband, a big guy, as

hunky as chopped Camembert, but cute, chipped in: 'Listen, son, when she says gall, you'd better believe it.' Gaul!' 1 quipped lispingly. 'Where the perfect perfume ith produthed.' Oh, I had them where I wanted them. I let my most magnanimous smile flit limpidly across my lux- ury set of lips. Boy, I could crack this baby faster than you could say Heisenberg. Probably.

(Nell L. Wregible)

'Flowers of Evil?' said Hannigan over my shoulder. 'That the filly in the eighth at Aqueduct?' Privately I called him Quasimodo. It seemed appropriate.

'I'll give you evil, you goddamn wimp- changeling!' The book's arc across the room matched the parabola of my father's scream: 'Get in here, R.T.!'

I followed him, but I picked up the Baudelaire. 'The topless bar on Jerome?'

He shook his head. `No, you wouldn't know it, wouldja? You're meeting a man there at five. Questions?'

`How will I know him?'

'He'll know you — you're as inconspicuous as a goldfish in a litter of kittens!'

'Is there time to change first?'

I ducked and the ashtray missed me. Quasimodo had the broom ready, and a new ashtray. He'd seen it all before.

I reached Jerome Avenue just after the freak tornado. All the bars were topless. I was glad I'd taken the Baudelaire.

(Susan H. Llewellyn)