Detective comedy 1: Setting up the shabby detective

The gas had been disconnected that morning

We now start to get a long list of problems to show how far the business had fallen.

Take a look.

The gas had been disconnected that morning, one of the coldest mornings for twenty years, and it could only be a matter of time before the electricity followed.

The Falcon's Malteser(2004)

These sound pretty horrible, and build on each other.

  • What? The gas is disconnected?
  • But wait, it gets worse - it’s super cold! We’re going to freeze without gas heating!
  • But wait, it gets worse - soon we won’t have electricity, either!

Note: The gas being cut off is a physical problem in the detective office. However, you could come up with all sorts of problems a business could have.

Can you see the problems related to the agency's work in these examples?

The sky was beautiful, blue, and annoyingly empty. Not a spaceship to be seen that morning. Or any morning for the last week. Or year, for that matter.

Management at the Sunnybank retirement village had refused to let us work in the cabana by the pool and instead shoved us into a storeroom next to the big TV area, with no desk space, and hardly any privacy.

Write your own variation. Think of a problem. How could it get worse? How could it get worse, again?
Previous page