I had to look it up… It is a deucedly good word for this! I might very well call it that, just for the joy of using the word! Thank you! You’ve improved this shining hour!
Very much what I’m thinking of. I’ve pretty much decided to do it, and now I know what heading to use!
Thank you all, all, and all! The SDMB may not be the repository (“huh, huh, he said ‘repository’”) of all knowledge, but it’s a darn good first approximation to it!
I don’t want to turn this into a game of topper, but I *included *“Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer” in my anthology of mystery parodies by the great humorists, The Defective Detective. Which I’m quite proud of because there has never been anything else like it. And it’s one of the funniest books you’ll ever read.
And mentioning that allows me to being up the old thread Wherefore, Exapno Mapcase? which is 64 kinds of irony.
Redshirts by John Scalzi is “a novel with three codas”. Each of the codas is a short story about a minor character or someone who had been touched by one of the characters in the novel. The novel is hilarious, but the codas are serious. One of them made me cry.
Can you give me publishing info on “The Defective Detective?” Amazon has several books with similar titles, and I can’t figure which one is yours. I could use a good laugher, and I’m fond of mysteries and detective fic and noir and the like. (Murder by Death is my favorite movie ever, and The Cheap Detective isn’t far behind!)