>zebra walk -- crosswalk?
there's a great line in one of Douglas Adams' books,
referring to a philosopher who is so clever he proves that
black is white and gets himself killed at the next zebra
crossing. I read this as a kid and was rather crushed years
later to discover it just meant a crosswalk and didn't
involve the philosopher being trampled by zebras (which,
incidentally, I believe are ZEB-ras in the UK and ZEE-bras in
the US).
The one I've always been a little vague on is "punter" which
seems to mean customer in some contexts and "gambler" in
others, but I may just have been reading about customers in a
bookmaker's shop and gotten confused.
on topic (no really) - an interesting writer who arguably
belongs in UK noir is Stephen Booth. He writes rural police
procedurals, starting with "Black Dog"; I think Stephen would
consider his work more in the vein of psychological suspense
in the Ruth Rendell tradition but there are elements of noir
as well. "Black Dog" has been much discussed in some circles
recently, since it has a police captain ranting about the
propensity of men walking dogs to find bodies that elude
police search teams. As our friends in DC have cause to
remember.
I don't know if anybody's mentioned Val McDermid; she has
several series and some standalones - some are more
Rendellesque, but from what I'd sampled the Kate Branigan
series is pretty hardboiled. The heroine is a smartmouthed
young woman, and the milieu is the Manchester nightclub/music
scene.
carrie
_________________________________________________________________
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 12 Jun 2002 EDT