Experiments in style: Hardboiled

A deadly game

One of the things I’ve been trying out is reworking a piece of text into a completely different style. A full exposition and explanation are given here:

Experimenting with styles

In today’s experiment I’d like to tell the story in the style of a hardboiled detective/private eye story. First, though, here is the original text on which these experiments or transformations are based:

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The original (template) text

In the middle of the night, I woke up (if you can call being semi-conscious being awake), walked purposefully towards the door to go to the bathroom — and almost knocked myself out.

The reason was that in the twin states of entire darkness and semi-somnambulance I was facing in a different direction from the one I thought I was facing. As a result, instead of walking through the door, I tried to walk through the wall.

The next few days brought nausea and headaches. After much prevarication I went to Accident and Emergency, where I waited petrified among people for whom “social distancing” means not quite touching you, and who wore their masks as a chin-warmer.

An hour and a half later I emerged into the twilight, secure in the knowledge that I had nothing more serious than mild concussion. I failed to do much writing, but I was pleased to have read a further 17% of my book.

Hardboiled version

A deadly game

TRIGGER WARNING

THIS STORY INCLUDES EXPRESSIONS AND ATTITUDES THAT SOME READERS MAY FIND OFFENSIVE.

The author, drawn by Terry Freedman

Two am. Night enfolded the city like a cobra, the silence pierced by a few bored neon lights, a lonely automobile horn and the occasional scream. It was the kind of night where the only people not safely tucked up in bed were broads, bums and Brunos. And private dicks.

Mean streets, by Terry Freedman

I’d been working on a case, trying to crack the conundrum of how to nail a flim-flammer they called The Fiddler. Real name Tony Vivaldi. I needed the bathroom.

I figured the light from the speakeasy across the street would be enough to see by. I figured wrong. Maybe it was the bourbon, maybe it was not sleeping too good, but I took a wrong turn. Next thing I knew I was trying to drill a hole in the wall with my head. I felt like I’d been hit by a tank.

For the next few days I was like a grizzly with a sore noodle, literally. In the end the old lady said, “Quit your beefing and go see the croaker.”

I hailed a hack. “Hospital.” I gritted. “And step on it.” I gave the cabby the fare, and five berries on top.

“Anyone comes asking, you ain’t seen me, right?” I grated.

“Far as I’m concerned, you’re the invisible man.”

I walked into the hospital, a real dive. Nobody was keeping their distance or wearing a mask. Maybe they figured they were in the last chance saloon anyway, so what the hell? A bull was loafing around nursing a gasper.

“Hey buddy”, I said. “How about you earn your money and tell these bums to obey the rules?”

“How about you shaddup or scram?”, be batted back.

I was about to have a real friendly discussion with him when a dame in a nurse’s uniform shimmied up. I reckoned she was in the region of 36-23-36 – just my kind of region¹. She told me to follow her. I wasn’t gonna argue.

We went into a room and she closed the door, and started to move my arms around.

“Why don’t we do this at your place?”, I said. “We could put on some mood music and get real cosy.”

“I’m gonna have to take your blood pressure”, she replied.

“Don’t bother”, I said. “I can already tell you that it’s maxed out.”

She asked me how I got the bruise. I was too embarrassed to come clean about it, so I told her I’d been dry-gulched.

“I think someone slugged me on the back of my head with a 45.”, I told her.

“So how come the bruise is on the front of your head?”, she asked.

“I got a flexible skull”, I answered.

She laughed, then threw me out, telling me to take it easy.

More mean streets, by Terry Freedman

A sedan flew by right through a puddle. It was like being under Niagara Falls.

“Hey, wise guy!”, I shouted.

But he was long gone.

I turned my collar up against a wind that must have been on vacation from Alaska. Just then, as I walked past the mortuary, my phone buzzed. In the blue glow the name Tony Vivaldi lit up.

It was gonna be a long night.

Glossary

Yes, this could have all been communicated in footnotes, but I didn’t want to interrupt your reading pleasure. 😁

Berries: dollars

Broads: women

Brunos: tough guys

Bull: policeman

Croaker: doctor

Dick: detective

Dry-gulched: knocked out

Flim-flammer: swindler

Gasper: cigarette

Hack: taxi

Noodle: head

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the following websites for the hardboiled slang:

Twists, Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang

Hard Boiled Slang Dictionary

Over to you

I’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s version.

For more experiments, please see the index. Paid subscribers also get behind the scenes information about some of these experiments as well as access to the whole of the back catalogue so to speak.

1. This line was inspired by the lyrics of Big Shot, by the Bonzo Dog Do Dah Band:

Then I saw... Hotsie. What a dame. A big, bountiful babe in the region of 48-23-38. One hell of a region.

Totally un-pc these days, and not a great deal less so back in the ‘70s, when I first heard this song. Hence the main reason for the trigger warning at the top of the article.