The Challenge: CAN YOU DO WORSE?
Write one (and ONLY one) opening
paragraph for the world’s worst hard-boiled mystery, the planet’s most tedious
cozy mystery, or history’s most tiresome historical mystery. Samples are below, and
we give extra credit for dreadful titles.
THE AWFUL COZY
Muffin McDade was sipping her first cup of
pumpkin-vanilla-nut coffee when the call came in. "Have you seen the damn
paper?" shrieked Eleanor Kinwhistle in her unmistakable drawl. Muffin sighed and
thought, not for the first time, that her cousin’s two-year stint at Ole Miss had a
lot to answer for. "That headline is the most insulting thing I have ever seen,"
Eleanor continued, still in operatic mode. "Fine Dining,’ it says. ‘Fine
Dining Comes to Little Clump Falls.’ Well, I’m sorry, but the Hav-a-Snak has
been providing extremely fine dining to the Little Clump population for six and one half
years now. Last week a couple came all the way from Muhlenville for my lemon bars."
Eleanor sniffled audibly, and then took a reviving – and noisy -- bite of breakfast
pastry. "You’re the sheriff, and I shouldn’t be saying this," she went
on, "but I swear, if that paper doesn’t print a retraction tomorrow, blood is
going to be shed. I mean what I say, Muffin, and I won’t be held responsible. Blood
is going to be shed."
THE AWFUL HARD-BOILED
Twilight oozed through the city. It shadowed a
million small betrayals. It blanketed a billion silent acts of corruption. From his office
in the meatpacking district, Delray could have watched the sunset flaring greasily across
the Jersey sky. He could have but he didn’t. His eyes were fixed on the bottle on his
desk. One good slug’s worth beckoned at the bottom. It glinted in the fading light.
Another man’s hand might have reached for the bottle. Another man’s fingers
might at least have twitched in its direction. But two tours in Nam had taught Delray the
value of control. His hands were still on his desk. After a minute, the demon of his
cravings was still as well. Yet again, Delray had conquered the whiskey. Then Judith
Steingarten knocked on the door.
THE AWFUL HISTORICAL
The clock in the church tower was striking eleven,
and Fiona McCandless still not abed. Mr. Labbring, the butler, would have her guts for
garters if he could see her at this moment – he had oft made it clear that he
didn’t approve of servants reading. Lor’, but he hadn’t half made a face
like a lemon when the trunk had arrived, scratched and bulging with books. Fiona giggled
at the memory, muffling the sound with a handful of her own thick chestnut hair. But her
giggles soon turned to sobs. By rights, the trunk should be sitting in her brother
Jamie’s rooms, and she beside him as he read aloud from his prized volumes. But Jamie
had been lost at sea these sixteen months, and this shabby trunk, these battered books,
were all Fiona had left. With a pale, slender finger she traced the cover of his favorite,
The Poems of Mr. William Shakespeare, and allowed herself to weep. Jamie gone,
herself a scullery maid...life was as bleak as the Yorkshire moors outside her attic
window. Sighing sadly, Fiona returned the book to the trunk, among its beloved companions.
So lost in sadness was she that she failed to note the sheet of robin’s-egg-blue
paper that floated free of its hiding place behind the book’s loose binding, and
drifted silently beneath Fiona’s bed.