[John Whitworth]

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.

[Brian Allgar]

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.’

[Brian Allgar]

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.”

[Douglas G. Brown]

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”.

[John Whitworth]

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.'

[Graham King]

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.”

[Graham King]

“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.”

[Rob Stuart]

Oops posted this twice

[Rob Stuart]

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.’

[Brian Allgar]

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

Eiríksjökullságrímjnpálðesseinarroðrúnarsoguðmund's son


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