Sunday, November 21, 2010

Amusing writer

I'm currently reading Bad News, a novel in the Dortmunder series by Donald Westlake (recently deceased author of a lot of very funny and well-written genre fiction). Here's a typical passage that caught my eye:

"The New York lawyer looked like a hawk who hadn't eaten for a week. His beak of a nose seemed to be pointing at prey, his sharp, icy eyes flicked back and forth like an angry cat's tail and his hands were large and knobby and, when Marjorie shook one of them, cold. His name was Otis Welles and he wore a suit that cost more than Marjorie's car, but somehow, instead of the suit giving some dignity to his bony, gristly body, his body seemed merely to cheapen the suit."

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