Free Gun in Cheek by Bill Pronzini Page B

gimmick.
    Or rather three gimmicks.
    His first gimmick is that every sentence is a separate paragraph.
    His second gimmick is that he doesn't use quotation marks or commas.
    Betsy said did she drink a lot?
    I said was Hitler a Nazi a lot?
    That is how Spencer writes dialogue.
    It is supposed to be funny dialogue
    Sometimes it is.
    The Dada Caper is supposed to be a spoof.
    Sometimes it is.
    She said why you lying cheating philandering Casanova Romeo gigolo any old port in the storm man about town.
    That is how Spencer writes sentences without using commas not even to set off clauses like this one or long strings of pithy pointed keen witted right on target adjectives.
    His third gimmick is that each chapter begins with an epigraph after the fashion of Mark Twain in Pudd'nhead Wilson .
    These epigraphs are supposedly written by Monroe D. Underwood.
    Who is also known as Old Dad Underwood.
    Some of Old Dad Underwood's epigraphs are funny.
    . . .going to bed with a good woman can relax a man . . . going to bed with a bad woman can relax a man twicet . . . iffen he is a good man. . .
    That's a funny one.
    But some of Old Dad Underwood's epigraphs are not funny.
    . . .oncet I knowed a feller what smuggled a ham into a synagogue . . . only man whatever got circumcized twentytwo times . . .
    That's not a funny one.
    All three of Spencer's gimmicks are clever.
    One reason they are clever is that they allow him to write a complete novel in less than twenty-five thousand words.
    Most writers need a minimum of fifty thousand words to write a novel.
    Another reason they are clever is that Spencer doesn't have to spend very much time on plotting.
    There is very little plot in The Dada Caper .
    It is about a Soviet-inspired DADA conspiracy.
    DADA means Destroy America, Destroy America.
    Anyhow Spencer knew a good thing when he saw it.
    So he made Chance Perdue into a series character.
    Other novels have followed and more are to come.
    But not a lot more.
    The problem with gimmicks like this is that they tend to lose their novelty after a while.
    Pretty soon readers will start looking for a two-sentence paragraph.
    Or a set of quotation marks.
    Or a comma.
    Or a plot.
    And when they don't find any
    . . . oncet I knowed a feller throwed a book across the room - . - I heered him say that's your last chance Perdue.
    Old Dad Underwood didn't write that one.
    I wrote that one.
    It may not be an epigraph either.
    It may be an epitaph for an Eye.

3. Cheez It, The Cops!
    Â 
    "Been a long day, sir," I said briskly. "But I'm still hard at it."
    "Insulting people?" he growled. . . . "Can't you ever be polite to somebody, Wheeler? Anybody?"
    "If I'd known I was supposed to be polite," I told him, "I never would have become a cop in the first place."
    -Carter Brown, The Victim
    Â 
    "You remember that Wall Street philanthropist who was killed by a can of sauerkraut thrown at his head. . . . What a pickle the police were in that day!"
    -Elsa Barker, The C.I.D. of Dexter Drake
    Â 
    T he policeman (cop, copper, bobbie, nabber, fuzz, pig—choose your favorite slang term) has generally been accorded more respect in Europe than in the United States. This is especially true among fiction writers, who have been inclined to venerate the actions of the professional manhunter over there and to sneer at them over here. Which is why, until the recent upsurge of interest in the American police procedural novel, far more British, French, and Scandinavian mysteries featured police detectives than did American mysteries. And why many crime stories written by Americans have had as their protagonists European police detectives. (John Dickson Carr's Henri Bencolin is just one of the more well known examples.)
    Part of the reason for this dichotomy is that the modern police agency is European in origin: the French Sûreté was formed in 1811, the London metropolitan police force was organized by Sir Robert Peel in 1829. These agencies were not only well