Romantic quest

In John Buchan’s The Three Hostages, Dr Greenslade explains his theory of successful thriller writing to Richard Hannay: ‘Let us take three things a long way apart,’ he says, ‘an old blind woman spinning in the Western Highlands, a barn in a Norwegian saeter, and a little curiosity shop in North London kept by a Jew with a dyed beard. Not much connection between the three? You invent a connection.’

Jean-Pierre Jeunet would find Dr Greenslade’s examples tame stuff. For his formula, he takes a tuba player with a flatulent dog, a vengeful Corsican prostitute with death-dealing eyeglasses, a hospital housed in a giant zeppelin hangar, a postman who bicycles through his customers’ kitchens, a barkeeper with an intricately hand-carved hand, a guy whose dying wish is to urinate standing up, a punning detective, and a couple of dozen other curiosities, and invents a connection.