Lucy Vickery presents the winners of Competition No. 2528
In Competition No. 2528 you were invited to submit an extract from an imaginary story in the Famous Five series written in the style of hard-boiled crime fiction. So it’s Blyton meets Hammett; the upper-middle-class crime-busting quintet, whose adventures are played out in a 1950s rural idyll punctuated by picnics and bicycle rides, filtered through the prism of gritty 1930s urban America, what Raymond Chandler calls ‘a world gone wrong’. Your entries bore many hard-boiled hallmarks: sharp repartee, staccato delivery, economy of expression, psychological drama, black humour and liberal use of simile; though there was a tendency to overdo it.
The winners, printed below, get £25 each. Adrian Fry pockets the extra fiver.
Julian was cool as iced beer in a heatwave, Anne blubbed like a bishop in a bordello, Dick’s wiseacre comments dried faster than a biro signature, and if dogs get goosebumps, Timmy could have proved it right there. Only George, a dame who knew about such things, said, ‘A secret passage! In Uncle Quentin’s library!’
‘UQ’s gotten himself into something even nastier than bibliophilia,’ smirked Dick.
‘That passage leads to Smuggler’s Cove, or my name’s not George.’
‘It’s Georgina,’ Anne reminded, ‘and I say we stop now. I’d kinda like the chance to grow up before I’m shot down.’
‘Hey,’ Julian intervened. ‘No chickens in this coop. Move!’ They started down the passage, cautious as oldsters on ice.
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ The voice came from behind, honey on the surface, sharpened steel beneath. At the passenger entrance she stood silhouetted, a picnic basket ready at her side.
‘Aunt Fanny!’
Adrian Fry
Dick slid the catapult inside the waistband of his shorts. He could feel its cool hardness against his belly. It felt good. It felt very good. When you’re going up against muscle, it’s a feeling you need. He turned and grinned at George. He could see the tension in her eyes but she grinned right back. If you had to go in with a broad at your side, you’d want it to be George. In a face-off where some guys’ cojones would turn to slush she would always come through. He looked down again at the cove. The flat sea was still as grey and uninviting as a flophouse sheet. But now there was something else. Coming round the headland was a launch. Malakoff’s launch. Dick cupped his hand to his mouth and made three gull cries. From the opposite cliff came Julian’s reply. This was it. Showdown time.
W.J. Webster
The Famous Five Goes To Hollywood sounded kinda snappy. But when my lithe, sunburned secretary showed in that pasty kid and pooch, hell, I knew there’d be tears before bedtime. Her cobalt-blue eyes appraised me.
‘I’m Anne. Our guardian, Ms Blyton, thought it would be fine fun coming here. But she’s lost the plot! The others are missing. Those nice cops people said something about finding Dick privately.’ She was sure picking up the lingo. I put down ‘Prufrock’, poured her a ginger beer, then lit a cigarette. ‘Kiddo, you gotta understand genre-napping.’
‘So I won’t see Julian again?’
On these mean streets, with that name, he’d be needing plastic surgery, Mexican-style.
‘Luckily, George is what you’d call hard-boiled, Mr Marlowe. She’s a match for any man.’
‘And Ms Blyton?’
‘She’ll fool around with Noddy and Big Ears.’
Suddenly her literary world seemed more sordid than mine. But that’s Toytown.
Simon Machin
‘Christ, this sucks,’ muttered Anne, as a wind sprang up and the boat tilted. ‘I should have stayed home.’ ‘Cut the crap,’ Julian told her. ‘You want to play with dolls, go some place else. This is an adventure, capeesh?’
‘Yeah, right. Like I’m supposed to enjoy getting wet and dirty the way that freak of nature George does?’
‘Screw you, asshole,’ George put in. ‘Who says I’m a freak?’
‘Everyone, baby,’ Dick told here. ‘But don’t let it burn you. Hell, freaks are people, too.’
‘Tell me when you’re through mouthing off and ready to start rowing,’ Julian announced curtly. ‘You want to be home for tea, better make it soon. The word is it’s cream cakes.’
‘That’s good enough for me,’ said Dick, and manned an oar. Anne got up and savagely kicked Timmy. It was all she could do, she knew. The bastards had her.
G.M. Davis
It was early in the cottage by the sea, when the only people around are the ones who went to bed alone. Me and George were in the kitchen, and she looked sore as a hooker that just got rolled by the ugliest sonofabitch on ten city blocks. I limbered over to cheer the gal up, real friendly and giving her the full snout, and quicker than a bum to a nickel she cracked me across the face, hollering like a fire truck: ‘Timmy! Timmy!’ It was lousy. First Julian runs in cutting up rough with his foot straight to my gut, then, before I could swing round to bite his ass, the broad was into me with a rolling pin. I figured it was time to beat it. But not before dropping a doozie behind me that could put a hoghouse on starvation for a month.
Gregory Whitehead
The tree-house door slammed in George’s face.
‘What did you do that for, Julian?’
‘Fun,’ the kid growled. He took a slug of D&B and shook another sweet cigarette from the pack. Broads! There was a voice from below. It was Dick. ‘Tea’s ready. There’s iced lemon and there’s a parcel for you. It looks like snow.’
Snow. A plant obviously. And they’d iced that poor lemon, Anne’s new friend from the parsonage! He stuck a shooter in his pocket and grabbed a handful of peas.
At the cottage, ‘Uncle’ Quentin greeted him. ‘Ah, Julian! I want you to meet a fellow at No-one’s Inn. We can shoot up there later.’
Julian didn’t want to ‘shoot up’. He knew what drugs could do. He made a dash for the kitchen. ‘Not so fast, Julian!’ It was Aunt Fanny. So she was in on it, too. He vomited.
James Tebbutt
No. 2531: The kindest month
There must be something good about February, apart from it being short. Let’s have a poem in praise of this much-maligned month (16 lines maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2531’ by 7 February or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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