It is what you don't expect... that most needs looking for.

Whenever I get distracted or bored, my eyes wander over to that chalkboard and I read the words. Some of them grow on me, and others annoy me. I attack the latter with eraser and chalk, and keep nudging at them until I like the way they look and sound. Others never make the cut at all and simply get erased. Perhaps one day I will sell these on eBay to RPG players who need names for characters or alien races.

"The suspect had experienced a ballistic interlude earlier in the evening," Miss Pao said, "regrettably not filmed, and relieved himself of excess velocity by means of an ablative technique."

Interesting things happen along borders - transitions - not in the middle where everything is the same.

Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whisky, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.

Southern California doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot.

How could your cover be blown in Canada? Why even bother going dark there? How could you tell?