As
an editor and sub-editor of periodicals, I used to strive to provide amusing or
playful article titles. Often they’d be puns, sometimes simply a play on words
relating to the subject. Some writers have an affinity for this kind of thing,
others haven’t (thank heavens, say some editors, I’m sure!)
A
long time ago, there appeared a short story in the UK short story magazine Argosy that has lingered with me, though I forget the title. Written by Anthony Grey, it was about a sub-editor who constantly thought in a clipped newspaper-heading style, often with puns; a living nightmare. Grey was perhaps the first
modern international hostage. He was covering the Cultural Revolution in China
for Reuters when many Red Guards invaded his house and dragged him out. They
hanged his cat in front of him and shouted ‘Hang Grey!’ He was imprisoned in
the basement of his own house for 27 months, 1967-1969, and then released back
to the UK. He worked in television and has published twelve novels (among them,
Saigon, The Chinese Assassin, and Peking) and three nonfiction books, the latest
of these being The Hostage Handbook
(2009) based on diaries he wrote during his ordeal in the 1960s.
I
carry over this penchant for word-play into my fiction. All of my Leon Cazador
stories have two-word titles, and most of them signify more than what appears,
besides a crime.
My
latest Cazador work in progress is entitled ‘Golf Lynx’ – and yes, it has
something to do with a golf course, an Iberian lynx or two, and more.
Here
are a few titles from the collection Spanish
Eye:
‘Night
Fishing’ is not only about that occupation, but the fishing of criminals.
‘Grave
Concerns’ is about the exhumation of the dead from the Spanish Civil War.
‘Fair
Cop’ is not only about a fair-haired cop, but relates somebody being arrested.
‘Bitter
Almonds’ is not about a poisoning but about an almond grove and arsonists.
‘Tragic
Roundabout’ is a play on the children’s TV series, concerning traffic roundabouts.
‘Big
Noise’ is about the damage to hearing in the second-loudest country in the
world.
‘Burning
Issue’ is not only about a building on fire, but a client’s progeny being
trapped.
‘Cry
Wolf’ is about wolves in Spain, with a twist.
‘Prickly
Pair’ plays with the ubiquitous prickly pears and involves a larcenous couple;
and here is the beginning of that story:
Prickly
Pair
“Most
members treat them with kid gloves.”
With great care,
I held down the fruit with a fork, and using a sharp knife, I cut off both ends
and made incisions lengthwise. Now I could peel the fruit with my fingers and
not suffer the ignominy of being irritated by the sharp hairs impregnating my fingers.
Prickly pears may be a delicacy, but you have to know how to treat them. Like
people, really.
Milly, my eating
companion, chuckled as she watched, her dark brown eyes glinting. Sensibly,
she’d selected melon and Serrano. “Reminds me of our club’s chairman and his
wife, the treasurer,” she said.
I swallowed and
pricked up my ears. “How?”
“The
Gambols—they’re a prickly pair. Most members treat them with kid gloves.”
* * *
So,
to begin with, we see the prickly pear, a fruit of dubious taste. While eating
them, one must take care not to get pricked. Hence my playful though hopefully
subtle use of the phrase ‘pricked up my ears’. And of course the ungodly in
this story happen to be a prickly pair, a couple called Gambol.
Caution,
though: don’t force the puns or word-play. Let the words flow naturally. It can
work well if it’s spouted by a character – as it does from Leon Cazador, since
it’s his narrative – rather than in narrative description.
* * *
If
you find Leon Cazador interesting, please consider buying the first collection
of his cases, Spanish Eye, published
by Crooked Cat, available as a paperback and an e-book.
http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Eye-Nik-Morton-ebook/dp/B00GXK5C6S/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1399382967&sr=1-5&keywords=nik+morton
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