"Bananas, as Weapon against Hitler"

I just finished a book called Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler.  It's the first in a series of books about Detectives Bryant and May in present day London, looking back on the beginning of their careers when they were solving cases during the London Blitz.  The plot is outlandish, and I got tired of hearing how unorthodox one of the detectives was, while only getting to see his alleged unorthodox methods in action a handful of times.  But the author seemed to be having so much fun that I couldn't help but enjoy myself.  I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but I will try the second book to see if Fowler worked some of the kinks out from the first.

At the end of the book is an alphabetical list of notations made by the unorthodox detective about the case.  Every entry refers to a line or an incident in the book, and encapsulates some of the wit and silliness that made me like this book, despite its many absurdities.  A sample:

Abyssinians, for purposes of ventriloquism

Architect, incomprehensible explanation by

Armitage, Maggie - price charges of ectoplasm clearance

Ability to use harpsichord as boiled egg-slicer

BBC, hilarity caused by bombing of

Davenport, Farley - emotional constipation of

Dwarves, gigantism of

Landladies, unlikely swordmanship of

Lithuanian botanists, incidence of vampirism amongst

Thwaite, Olivia - floral solution to prominent nipples by

Perhaps if I ever get my own customized fortune cookies like the ones I wrote about in the previous post, I'll ask for all of the above to be inserted as fortunes.