Speccie the new black by 24th July
 

Now how can I get this to versify?

No. 2808: the new black

We are already blessed with Tartan Noir and Nordic Noir (i.e., Scottish and Scandinavian crime fiction). You are invited to invent a new addition to the genre and supply an example (up to 150 words). Please email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 24 July.

Guantamano Noir
 

Guantamano Noir

Detective Harry W. Bush (he was always having to correct people who confused him with the fictional detective Harry Bosch) looked long and hard at the body. The bulging eyes, the blue of asphyxia, the soaking wet hair, were strong indications that the man had been the victim of a Guantamano ‘waterboarding’ that had gone too far.

A guard appeared from the corridor. ‘Waddaya doing here?’ he asked. Bush sighed. ‘Obviously, I’m investigating the crime scene. This man appears to have been tortured to death.’

The guard looked confused. ‘Crime scene? No, this ain’t it. It’s down the hall - the General’s favorite coffee mug has been stolen, and he wants a full enquiry leading to an arrest.’

Now it was Bush’s turn to feel perplexed. ‘Then who -?’

The guard looked at the body. ‘Oh, him?’ He winked at Bush. ‘Let’s just say he gave his all for the Patriot Act.’

Mumbai Noir
 

Code of honour (Mumbai Noir)

(This rather nasty piece is a shortened version of something I once posted on the fiction site, but almost immediately withdrew. Waste not, want not ...)

Ravi Singh was a quiet and well-liked young man, which made his crime all the more shocking.

The investigating detectives eventually pieced together his account, beginning with the day he was summoned to the big house.

Mr Gupta was seated behind his antique rosewood desk, meticulously paring his fingernails. After several minutes, without looking up, he spoke. “Because of you, my daughter is no longer a virgin. You have stolen my honour. And now you must put matters right.”

“You wish me to marry your daughter, sir?”

Mr Gupta finally looked up from his pile of nail-parings with a feral smile.

“No, Mr Singh. For someone like you to marry my daughter would only compound the shame.”

“But sir ... how can I ...”

Mr Gupta swept the nail-parings on to the Qum rug beneath his desk.

“What you are required to do, Mr Singh”, he murmured, “is to kill my daughter.”

Milquetoast noir
 

Afraid he was being followed, Caspar weaved through a maze of alleys for a dozen blocks, returning to a rundown hotel across the street from his starting point. Spotting a loose window in the shadows of a dumpster, he dropped into the basement, and skulked up five flights of the back stairway, glancing over his shoulder at every turn.

Caspar deftly picked the lock and entered the seedy rented room. He gazed at the rump-sprung couch silhouetted by the glow of the flashing neon “Rooms For Rent” sign outside the solitary window. Locking the door behind him, Caspar tiptoed to the couch, and lowered himself into it. With blood throbbing in his temples, he reached down, and yanked off the offending tag hanging from the cushion beneath.

Illuminated in the pulsating neon, it read “ DO NOT REMOVE THIS TAG UNDER PENALTY OF LAW”.

Poetry Noir

The Laureate lay face upwards on the communal table at the Poets' Writing Retreat, transfixed, and doubtless for he was a believer, transfigured. Is this a dagger that I see before me? thought Chief Inspector Shakeshaft. Of course it bloody was. Bumhole, how art thou translated.

The poet's collected works lay higgledy-piggledy all around him. Shakeshaft picked one up at random and opened it. Every line of every poem had been scored through heavily in black.

'Redacted, guv?' breathed Sergeant Dickinson, a woman of few words.

Shakeshaft shook his head. 'Edited more like, Emily. And this,' he pointed to the body, 'the final editing. Edited out of the living altogether.'

'An inside job?' said Sergeant Dickinson. The Laureate had been a critic too. 'TLS?' she added. 'That means...'

Shakeshaft shook his head again. 'Anyone could have done it.' He indicated the slim volumes. 'Anyone who can read, that is.'

Black Forest Noir
 

Chalk outlined where Rottweil district’s foremost horologist had perished, horribly contorted, amongst tumbled gears and tools. Heidegger leaned forwards: left thumb in his lederhosen braces, right forefinger mimicking the clockmaker’s wares, ticking off points.

“So: the gateau found here held poison. But did it kill Pfählentropf?”

Sceptical, Inspector Stumpf frowned: “His stomach contents show that-”

“-That he’d eaten a large helping? Yes. But the gateau was toxified afterward, to misdirect blame. Laboratory results show tetanus toxin in Pfählentropf’s blood- but not stomach.”

“So how was he poisoned?”

“A scratch– or peck! A minutely blood-stained rag is in the waste bucket. He was working on this clock, recently brought in for repair; examine the ledger! Test (warily!) for tetanin smeared on its sharpest components; check when its mechanism was set to go off, relative to the established time of death.
This was murder not by cook, but by cuckoo-clock.”

Rio Noir
 

“Carnival spells crime,” snarled Investigador Heloisa Pereira. “Always.”
Extravagantly-flounced fabric, lively-hued, accentuated alleyway squalor and death’s bleakness. From the dancer’s corpse, Detetive Adalberto Rocha rose: “Yes?”
“Noise… crowds… brief encounters, unguarded. Masks! Costumes may conceal weapons; angel’s feathers, a devil’s blade.”
Rocha grimaced: “Villain sashays past; victim drops, onlookers assume ‘drunk!’ Meanwhile, getaway. A perfect crime!”
“Or gunshots unnoticed on Ipanema beach while everyone’s applauding sunset… Some poor soul’s last. I’m surprised it’s not tried more frequently.”
“So here we’ve a dish served cold, thirtyish, unmarked, bag and cash in hand, all dressed up with nowhere to go but the morgue.”
“Post-mortem’ll tell more. But look, under the tan and sequins… Blueish? Lipstick: smudged. That smell… cyanide?
“So, we’re looking maybe for an amorous, dentist-shunning lowlife whose kiss harbours a more deadly halitosis than usual?”
“Murder in Rio,” rebuked Pereira, “is often colourful; never comical.”

Oops posted this twice

Icelandic Noir

Reykjavík, February 2023.

Detective Inspector Eiríksjökullságrímjonpálssarroðrúnarsoguðmundsson took a drag on his cigarette and gazed up at the vast corpse that would have blocked out the sun had there been any. A team of uniformed officers were starting to outline the dead Fin whale in chalk.
‘You’re aware,’ the DI said to the Captain of the Hvalur 9, ‘that whaling has now been outlawed in this country?’
‘Of course,’ the Captain replied.
‘And yet this animal’s body appears in the harbour at the very same time that you and your crew return from...’ he consulted his notebook, ‘a sailing holiday.’
‘It is an odd coincidence.’
‘Yes, isn’t it? There’s evidence of multiple harpoon wounds.’
The Captain nodded gravely. ‘I expect we’re looking at a suicide.’
‘Suicide?’
‘Well, it was obviously very depressed. I mean, look at that downturned mouth.’
‘Okay,’ Eiríksjökullságrímjonpálssarroðrúnarsoguðmundsson said, ‘that’ll do. Let’s tuck in.’

Enjoyable, Rob (both times). But don't you need an apostrophe?

Eiríksjökullságrímjnpálðesseinarroðrúnarsoguðmund's son


Ooops! You must have changed it as I was posting!

Yes, for some reason it kept inserting an extra space when I uploaded it. Sorted now.

Excellent, Rob - the combination of solemn and unprincipled recalls relevant people I have known.

Saudi Noir
'Take your time,' Firas told the small imam, stifling a yawn. Some days he regretted being promoted from the murder squad to this more important work of detecting women drivers.
The imam stared at the line-up of seven women, veiled in identical black burqas.
'These are the wives of Ibn Hakim,' said Firas patiently. 'Which one was driving his car?
The Imam hesitated, then said eagerly: 'Let me speak to all of them, to give enlightenment that driving is for a woman haram, for it is written...'
A shot rang out from somewhere behind Firas. One of the wives was hurled back by a bullet's impact, and the others screamed.
Firas raced forward to the figure now motionless on the ground. He gestured to one of the other wives to lift the veil, then gasped in astonishment. This was no wife, but Ibn Hakim himself. Life had become more interesting.

Demise of an Airshipman
 

Iron Noir (Steampunk crime fiction)

Captain Falcongetter’s brassbound mahogany prosthetics clanked on
deck, hissing manfully, as his smoke-smudged, diversely augmented crew hauled the signalling investigators’ royal blue air-launch alongside then secured the telescoping gangplank. ‘Greetings, Officers.’
Boarding, beardless Lieutenant Bullwrench casually touched his tricorn with a braid-edged linen glove. He reserved formal salutes for captains of naval airships, not disreputable merchantmen like the Bolstered Bulwark. ‘Captain, you’re missing your First Mate, Jasper Inchfirkin?’

‘How-’

‘Identifying documents among his… remains. You might say he gate-crashed yesterday’s Royal Garden Party, Sir. Evidently, from a not inconsiderable height not unadjacent to your then cruising altitude- established by Greenwich Observatory. You alone were seen overhead.’

Falcongetter sighed: ‘Jasper was… liaising… with Honoria Aspersion of the Cloudpiercing Sorority, aboard her own craft, far higher. Need I explain Terminal Velocity? He’d have attained maximum falling speed long before passing us.’

‘Hmm. Accident? Suicide? Or… lover’s quarrel?’

I love Jasper Inchfirkin. I read a novel once that contained a character called Vilebastard though I can't remember his Christian name or even how exactly you were to pronounce it. (VillybatARD?)

Obsidian Noir (Prehistoric crime fiction)
 

Thanks, John! I had fun with the names.
Those for the next piece (my fourth and last submitted before deadline) exercised me more. I felt I had to leave the victim unnamed, as the nickname we now know him by.. is of our own generation's devising. To call him by it would be anachronistic and give the game away, whereas to call him something else could be distracting.

(Hmm. Should I have used 'plaits' instead of 'braids'? ...Ladies?)


Karela’s braids whip in alpine afternoon chill. Fists knot: “Late. Late. Late.”
Justiciar Erdeweise leans close also; over the fur-clad, tattooed shepherd damp with melt-water, soon to refreeze: “Yes… days past. Don’t fret; you couldn’t have done more. Kinfolk?”
“He’s none known. He settled from the northeast, ten years ago...” She shakes, not merely cold: “Murderers.”
“I’m… uncertain of that…” Erdeweise raises one palm, quelling protest: “I know: ‘kindly; respectable herder; quiet’. But… some secret bloodguilt, long borne? Those strangers, spotted trailing him, maybe wrought fair vengeance.”
“Arrow to his shoulder? While fevered? No honourable challenge!”
“He’d made for the pass; seemingly, knew himself pursued. Fleeing- why?”
“Ach! ...Must we leave him, so?”
“There’s not time before dusk. Tomorrow…”
But suddenly Karela knows: this high cold sleep will endure far longer…
“Whoever next sees him… slain, alone, here… will they think us savages?”

Eh? I don't think I get it at all, Graham. Buit maybe I turned thick overnight. Clues welcome.

The cause may well be obscurity on my part, not density on yours, Brian!

Ötzi is a well-preserved natural mummy of a man who lived about 3,300 BC. The mummy was found in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps, hence 'Ötzi'.
I sought to keep my speculation in accord with what has so far been found out or deduced about his person, lifestyle and demise.

The idea of a district investigating officer or 'Justiciar' back then, there, is unfounded so far as I know, but where hunter-gatherers and pastoralists may have mingled, occasional conflicts of interest seem to me likely, and so a framework of laws and a recognised dispassionate law-person would seem both desirable and plausible. Ordinary citizens and especially blood-relatives would surely also have a role to play.