Shadowplay
A night of trick crumpets, Cackling black cloud heaps raining down jokes like whales, Glock Fontwhistle, Clown Detective, has had four coffees and knows it. A fumbling raincoat of cream pie japes swaddling his body of hard luck scars and candy fat dimples, Fontwhistle has had a hard night of dead end alleyways and hasn’t got a jack of diamonds to show for it. The rain drops apple pies of sugared fruit and crazy food colourings of hot water on rat throated roads, cobble stone laneways rain cratered and sewer fog shrouded with ruined heavy water, and Fontwhistle is thick with smoke, choked with meat tobacco, sick with sleuthing and wet mysteries his raincoat won’t solve. As always Fontwhistle writes on his cigar to get things started. Novels, if the writing is bleak enough, can cover leaping hectares of smoking device, can forage and crimple and wound and tinker with all the primary colours a good tube of tobacco will contain. A fox of tough thoughts, a blooming mouth fire of lateral thinking always gets Fontwhistle underway. Mysteries revealed by gusts of the crumbling firework his hands conjure and clap, he watches as leads shimmer before him, appear and disappear, petty thefts, bicycle heists, bread nabbings, rabbit catchings, cabinet nickings.
The rain came down in parrots. Fontwhistle is on the case.