The road that leads to the road that leads to the road not taken…

Me (to Wife): I got an idea for a mystery-type of novel while at the 7-Eleven.

So, here we are in the zenith of le info age and planet Earth has pretty much made the crawl from snail 2 e mail.

Some cat over in the U.K. concludes the obscene phone call craze ran out in the 80s, died in the 90s with caller i.d., and everybody thinks they are just stupid or actually enjoys them these days.

How is a bloke to get his jollies?

Creating a new twist in distributing unsolicited obscenity in order to offend, our pervert reverts to snail mail. He comes up with the most outrageous crap anyone could possibly contrive and sends numerous profane missives to perfectly innocent couples exploiting their underlying tensions. Suspicions that have quietly festered begin oozing green envious pustules that explode into passions of murder, lust, adultery, love and hate.

Scotland Yard is brought onto the case when rudimentary police investigations track down their commonality: they all originate from various of the many royal residences.

Fleet Street, of course, basks in the light of this news which it spins ever more sensational.

Still without leads, other than to the royal addresses, Her Majesty’s security forces and all involved legal entities are further perplexed when DNA testing of the postage stamp adhesive reveals the saliva is that of a horse. This tantalizing intelligence is “leaked” to the press who predictably and cruelly plays on the equine facial similarities of a certain member of the royal family.

So, that’s the basic premise and some of the plot elements. What do you think?

Wife: That’s great, Honey. Got that stuff listed on eBay yet?

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Isaac Macy Wright

1 July 2009 at 15:21

One more thing. Walter can take the snow chains and bludgeon someone with them. Now that’s a secret life.

1 July 2009 at 15:18

Um, crank calls are one thing. Identity theft is something else entirely. I love the idea. Love it. Would you consider adding the idea that the letters are hand-written, in what appears to be brown ink. After testing, Scotland Yard discovers the ink comes from the same source as the saliva? Better yet, how about crank email from a bogus identity, starting today?

1 July 2009 at 07:17

Hmm, perhaps I didn’t elaborate fully. Instead of daydreaming over ambitions lost, your lead will instead dream of feeding steroids to a hanger-sized pen of wrens and swallows, ensuring their rapid growth and power only hormones can give them. As these birds breed, Walter will be in the on-sight laboratory developing a new strain of avian flu, as well as small incendiary devices that are triggered only when the bird’s heart stops beating. When the hanger houses 40,000 birds, Walter infects them all with the flue virus and releases them from their Minnesota location in late August. The birds, running behind, make a mad dash South, infecting everyone in their wake. When the incubation period is over and the birds begin to drop from the sky, they do so on fire, thereby burning fields, buildings and housing along the way. Then Walter goes to get snow chains put on the car.

1 July 2009 at 07:13

1) I think I’ll start writing crank letters.

2) You have to write a book about a frustrated adventurer, because that’s what you are.

s.r.g.

1 July 2009 at 07:15 Log in to Reply

Well, I’m writing a book about a guy in England who does what I was talking about. Duh.

Everyone in college English reads Walter Mitty because it is the shortest of all the required-reading short stories. Not for that reason, however, is it the stand-alone classic that it is.
It’s brevity ensures greater readership, certainly, but is more a testiment to economy of story as it is many stories within a story whose range transverse a broad spectrum of appeal. Also, more people are going to read it because it says a lot in a short space that a lot of people can relate to and then tell their friends. To attempt its replication in any way shape or form spacks of cliche. That you would suggest such a thing puts you back at the starting line in my literary mental game of mother may I… again! You must be having an off day, Mr. Wright.