{"id":3961,"date":"2017-06-11T14:57:16","date_gmt":"2017-06-11T04:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=3961"},"modified":"2017-06-13T08:02:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-12T22:02:00","slug":"a-corpse-in-the-copse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=3961","title":{"rendered":"A CORPSE IN THE COPSE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>Once upon a time, there were lots of really popular, really exciting tough-guy action thrillers by Robert Ludlum. Some on them were made into films, and they were really exciting and really popular too.<\/p>\n

The titles? The Bourne Identity. The Matarese Circle. The Janson Directive. The Bourne Supremacy. The Lazarus Vendetta. The Sigma Protocol…
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

There’s a bit of a pattern, isn’t there?<\/p>\n

A name – for instance, Bourne – and another word, preferably something serious and mysterious that made you think of guns and assassins and documents and top-secret plans for world domination.\u00a0 I remember Howard and I fooling around one evening around making up silly titles; what if you paired the serious, mysterious word with Banana<\/em>\u00a0 – (why not?) – then you would have the following bestsellers:<\/p>\n

The Banana Protocol<\/em>
\nThe Banana Inheritance<\/em>
\nThe Banana Intervention<\/em>
\nThe Banana Paradigm<\/em>
\nThe Banana Dispensation<\/em>
\nThe Banana Palimpsest<\/em>
\nThe Banana Termination
\nThe Banana Occurrence
\nThe Banana Conundrum
\nThe Banana Tapes
\nThe Banana Conspiracy….
\n<\/em>and so on and so on and so on.
\nI think we had a list of about 50 titles. We probably thought it was all funnier than it was, but I remember laughing so much my jaw ached.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve lost that list, but in tidying up some papers came on another. We were thinking of ‘cosies’ – those (typically) English village murder mysteries with titles like The Body in the Library<\/em>. So how about these?
\nA Death on the Heath<\/em>
\nA Corpse in the Copse<\/em>
\nA Kill on the Hill<\/em>
\nA Grave in the Grove<\/em>
\nA Ghoul By the Pool<\/em>
\nThe End Round the Bend<\/em>
\nStrangulation at the Station <\/em>(though Howard really liked the rather more arcane Defenestration at Paddington Station)<\/em>
\nA Stranger in the Ranges<\/em>
\nA Beheading at Reading<\/em>
\nSpent Shells at Tunbridge Wells<\/em>
\nStone Cold at the Willoughby Wold
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, there were lots of really popular, really exciting tough-guy action thrillers by Robert Ludlum. Some on them were made into films, and they were really exciting and really popular too. The titles? The Bourne Identity. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3961"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3973,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions\/3973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}