On 18 February 2005, Michael Robison wrote:
: "When the phone rang, Spenser was in the garage killing a
man." Haha!
: Loved it. Might not be verbatim. Close as I can
remember.
That's from FIREBREAK (2001), a Parker novel by Richard Stark
(Donald E. Westlake): "When the phone rang, Parker was in the
garage, killing a man." It's a great opening line.
Most of Stark's books start with the "when (something),
Parker (did X)" construction (which must have some
grammatical name I don't know). Sometimes I make up my own
versions, for when Parker's working in a boring office job:
"When Outlook reminded him of his eleven o'clock meeting,
Parker was finishing his third game of Solitaire." "When the
coffee urn stopped pouring and left his mug only half-filled,
Parker got a fresh package of grounds from the
cupboard."
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 18 Feb 2005 EST