We have a winner

My favorite entry in last week's Raymond Chandler simile fest was this, from PKL:

"Jingo slithered into the bar like a vaseline salamander in a sharkskin suit."

If he'll send me his postal address at detectivesbeyondborders (at) earthlink (dot) net, I'll send his prize: His choice of the copy of Farewell, My Lovely that gave rise to the contest, or Boiling a Frog, a novel by an author who goes over the top in a different way: Christopher Brookmyre. If he has those already, I'll send another book from the Detectives Beyond Borders Crime Fiction Collection.

Honorable mention goes to Adrian McKinty's "He stuck out like a reasonable man in the Fox News building."

Thanks to all for the verbal high jinks and for helping me clear a bit of space in my book-muddled house.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

"He stuck out like a zoot suit at a Shaker funeral"

That title is mine, but Raymond Chandler blazed the trail. Here's how he sums up the big ganch Philip Marlowe meets at the beginning of Farewell, My Lovely:

"Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food."

Over in Baltimore, Dave Rosenthal devoted a fill-in-the-blanks quiz to those memorable thunderclaps of over-the-top wordage. Here are his first two questions:

1) "The walls here are as _____ as a hoofer's wallet." Playback

2) "The voice got as _____ as a cafeteria dinner." Farewell, My Lovely

Get the idea?

Now it's your turn. Do what I did in the title of this post, and make up your own Chandleresque description. If it's good enough, I may award a few books as prizes. And my judgment is as good as ____

© Peter Rozovsky 2009