[John Whitworth]

I'm no quite sure how this ought to look. The model is presumably Dan Brown who is always tellng you things you don't wnt to know.

No. 2844: inconsequential

You are invited to submit an extract from either a gripping thriller or a bodice-ripping romance containing half a dozen pieces of inconsequential information (150 words max). Entries should be emailed to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 16 April.

[Rob Stuart]

You're right, John, Dan Brown is the exemplar here. Adrian will be pleased.

[Sylvia Fairley]

Or the bodice-ripping romance - who would be the model for that, do you think?

[Brian Allgar]

Originally Posted by Sylvia Fairley

Or the bodice-ripping romance - who would be the model for that, do you think?

Oh, practically any of us bodice-rippers.

[Rob Stuart]

The President’s head was bobbing in and out of the crosshairs, but there were still too many other people around him. Some of these people had short hair, the assassin noted idly, whilst others, often the women, wore it long. None of them were in wheelchairs, although there was no particularly reason that any of them should have been. His black leather gloves, which he had picked up just the other week in Ipswich for £19.99, a very reasonable price considering the quality, creaked ominously as his finger tensed on the trigger. The gunman shifted his foot a bit, then decided it had been more comfortable in the original position, then changed his mind again. Suddenly the target was momentarily isolated and he had a clear shot. He fired and the President’s skull exploded, completely ruining his suit. The assassin, who was incidentally extremely fond of biscuits, smiled in satisfaction.

[Orwn Acra]

There exists the very real problem of the massive amounts of errata accumulated in the outside world since I entered Rosewood. The library here is small, with many abridged dictionaries (abridges to nowhere whose mistakes I have nearly exhausted in my recordings, a feat that does not settle my mind in the least bit (there being the possibility of some idiot librarian zealously increasing the catalogue (a librarian who cares little for the misplaced tittle, not a jot for the freak dot, and even less for the rebel ellipsis (blue orbicular marks bouncing like rubber balls around a sun-spilled living room when I was three and happy (my condition only a minor tremble then and my mother (1935-19**, but let us obscure those fatal digits and focus on her hand in mine as we walk down the sloping paths of sleep (the world free of typos) to a pillow and a dream and a bed of soft parentheses)))))).

[John Whitworth]

That is brilliant, Orwn. Here is my effort.

He cradled his Byronic head on her blushing and voluptuous breasts. 'Oh God!' she murmured as agony and ecstasy mingled inextricably. Lord Byron was a nineteenth century romantic poet with remarkable good looks and a club foot which his avatar had inadvertently placed on hers. An avatar is strictly the visible manifestation of a Hindu deity but I use it loosely here to mean a lookalike. 'Oh God!' she repeated. Such routine invocations of the Almighty were common in those days when superstition was rife. 'Oh God!' she cried for a third time as love flooded her virgin heart. A virgin was a term used in those benighted times for a person who had not yet enjoyed sexual intercourse. They were indeed dark days! 'My dearest Fanny!' he murmured, using a fond diminutive of Frances which had no vulgar undercurrent then. He was, after all, a peer of the realm.

[Graham King]

007 accelerated; his pursuers (whose villainously-intense mustard late-registration Ford Mondeo’s valid tax-disc obfuscated their criminality) gained. Bond’s evasive driving and the Mauser marksman’s aim were both constrained as each thundered across a narrow hump-backed bridge- built 1636 by Charles I; damaged by Battle of Naseby cannonades, 14th June 1645; repaired during Restoration times- now suffering fresh damage: one ricochet dislodging from its parapet a chip of marlstone (Jurassic sediment containing fossil sea-urchins, occasionally ammonites) which, falling into the stream, disturbed a brown trout (species Salmo trutta, from Latin trutta: a trout): one beneficiary of the deadly, fast-paced human conflict since, roused from torpor, it spotted and consumed (exhausted on the surface from its brief mating flight) a male mayfly, such as the fishing lures Drowned Golden Olive, Drowned French Partridge and Grey Wulff Mayfly emulate. Bond’s car seemed a similarly enticing target for Blofeld’s men.

[Graham King]

“Giles!” she breathed, relishing his firm embrace; spelling it with an ‘i’ to herself, though never having seen it written nor been told this. ‘Gyles’ would have brought to mind erudite pundit Mr Brandreth: too grippingly associated with those anagrams, crosswords and trivia which had become an unhealthy obsession; until her own Giles appeared, bringing release from those preoccupying bonds- even as he now was tenderly unbuttoning her blouse. “Dearest!” he murmured, meaning ‘most beloved’ not ‘most expensive’- although his outlay to date, in jewellery, meals and fares (for neither of them drove) had been not insignificant- and indeed this second meaning occurred to her not at all, in this moment of passion on the hexagonally-paved terrace, among the heady-perfumed bougainvillea of variety ‘glabra’; purple, long-flowering, and hardy (close to the original wild form).
“Giles,” she quizzed, hyperventilating querulously, “how DO you spell your name?”

[Rob Stuart]

Your thriller's great, Graham.