Your flashback needs a flashback.

A red sports car hurtles along a country lane, the radio playing a Blondie track. But this is not enough to specify the time. The two women in the car are arguing over the blond passenger's apparent inability to read a map. The brunette driver angrily drains a can of beer, hurls it away vehemently. One cut as the empty can flies over a fence. One more cut, and it rolls to a stop in the grass, revealing a sell-by date in May 1988.

There you are. Fifteen seconds into the sequence and we already have a clear sense of the women's dynamic -- it will be crucial -- and we know this happens in the past, so it's undoubtedly backstory, told with startling economy.

The use of the can to establish the date so quickly and unambiguously is brilliant. No, it's contrived and ham-fisted. No, it's written (and produced and in this case directed) by David Renwick, so it's tongue-in-cheek.

It's from the "The Judas Tree, " the April 2010 feature-length episode of the clever and hugely entertaining television series "Jonathan Creek," which since 1997 has featured endearing Alan Davies as the scruffy, beduffled but rarely befuddled expert on stage magic and illusions. And we have to wait until the end of the program to know that Renwick's rich flashback has fooled us. (And in this case, it fools Jonathan.) We're so taken by the economy of the exegesis, by the way the story hits the ground running, by the way he obeys the rule to start as late as possible in any scene, by the uncanny events that then unfold, that we forget to ask an obvious question: what happened even earlier? The swiftness of the story deceives the memory.

Left, Alan Davies. Right, Alan Beechey (in 1975). Scary, huh? And I had a duffle coat.

Yes, the reach of Renwick's writing often exceeds our grasp of the events, but what's a mystery for? The apparent contrivance and coincidences of his baffling set-ups are whittled down so satisfyingly over the course of an hour and a half, that we can easily brush off the traces that remain. These are good mysteries and great visual story-telling. And funny with it. Catch them if you can.

To say nothing of the dog. For once.

Listening on my iPod to a download of a sadly abridged reading from the BBC of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in A Boat, one of my favorite books.

(Why is this author always given his full name? He's never referred to as just "Jerome." I suppose people like saying it. The K stands for Klapka, incidentally, which shows he got his sense of humor from his parents.)

The file info says the reader is the great Stephen Fry, but it turns out to be his equally talented friend and former performing partner, Hugh Laurie. I find myself laughing aloud in the street at passages like:

" . . . [Having moored on the bank of the Thames and prepared a meal] We had just commenced the third course — the bread and jam — when a gentleman in shirt-sleeves and a short pipe came along, and wanted to know if we knew that we were trespassing. We said we hadn’t given the matter sufficient consideration as yet to enable us to arrive at a definite conclusion on that point, but that, if he assured us on his word as a gentleman that we were trespassing, we would, without further hesitation, believe it."

Plug here for Connie Willis's hilarious science fiction time-travel novel To Say Nothing of the Dog, which draws heavily on this story and on the works of Wodehouse.

And if you cross a Great Dane with a dachsund, you'd need a stepladder.

Then there's all this business of designer dogs. It probably started with the labradoodle (Labrador retriever and poodle), possibly to shove some of the poodle's intelligence and (supposedly) hypoallergenic qualities into the nation's favorite breed.

Now you have all kinds of hybrid, such as the "Dorkie" (dachshund and Yorkshire terrier) or the "Puggle" (pug and beagle). And no kidding, a chihauhau/Pekingese hybrid is called a "Cheeks."

So it occurred to me that if you cross a Shih-Tzu with a Poodle, you'd get a redundancy.


It does exist. It's disappointingly called a Shih-Poo. Close.

The private beauty of restraint.

Secundus's scout troop is having a bake sale during the kids' Saturday soccer at the Rye Recreation Park, to raise money for a local charity. I drop by during his shift this morning, Leila in tow. As we're standing there in the field, momentarily isolated, one man and his dog on a bright blue leash, an older man ambles over from a nearby table.

"Is that your dog?" he asks.

Oh, oh, oh, too many, too many sarcastic replies fills my brain. So many that I'll have to categorize the potential responses according to the possible emphases within the four-word sentence. "Is that your dog?" gets a different funny from "Is that your dog?" "No, it's my . . ."

Taken by Tertius last year with his Fisher Price camera.

But I don't. And won't. Even now. The man is pleasant and a dog-lover. He smiles and pets Leila, who licks his hands. We chat about a show on Animal Planet, deploring the cruelty to dogs that it depicts. He has a faint Irish brogue. He's a regular volunteer for the Youth Soccer Program. I dimly remember that he was the man with whom my eyeglasses had been deposited a year ago, when I'd dropped them while watching Secundus play during my one true season as a literal soccer dad, and I wish he was available to track down the really nice pair I mislaid on Thursday. There are too many other people in this world who deserve my rudeness.

Like the woman I passed on the way to the park, who doesn't realize that reining in your dog to stop it attacking mine doesn't work if you only shorten your leash by about two inches so your lab mix can still reach her. Even when I have her tightly gripped behind my legs. But I say nothing.

Like the woman pulling out of the Citibank parking lot a few minutes after I left the Rec, who assumed -- quite wrongly -- that I was just going to stop my brisk walk and cede my right of way on the sidewalk to let her drive past. She stopped in time. And I say nothing.

Or like the woman yesterday turning left onto the Playland Parkway at Milton Road (site of many an incident), only to encounter me and Leila already halfway across the intersection. Your bad-tempered, long-suffering, arrogant gesture toward the red pedestrian light fails to take into account that I had, in fact, stopped in the middle of the road to let you pass, if you wished; that under any circumstances, light or no light, you ought to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk on a right turn; and that had I not refrained from pressing the crosswalk button on a day with almost no traffic, you'd have still been back on Milton waiting for the red light.

All of which I would have said, only she was already speeding toward the interstate, smug in her self-righteousness, unaware that I'd just shaved 30 seconds off a journey that's so important to her, she feels it entitles her to give up a little humanity and grace. Which is why I'm writing it now. There, I feel better.

Major media blunder.

I was reading "Dear Abby" for story ideas, as you do, when I spotted a link on the page that said: "PHOTO's: People's Sexiest Man Alive." 

So I clicked it, and it wasn't me. Again. Bugger. I'm going out to eat worms.

On the other hand, today's Rye Record did include my letter about dogs.

Curtain call.

I just received the word that my dear friend, centenarian actress Sylvia Davis, died yesterday at the Actors Equity nursing home in Englewood, NJ. Regular followers with long memories may remember that I wrote a week of blog entries in her honor in April, culminating in her one hundredth birthday. A small, unworthy tribute from an admirer to an actress who, like so many, didn't have a resume that in any way reflected her enormous talent.

(You can read those entries in order, if you wish, by starting with "My other girlfriend . . . " and then hitting the "Newer Post" link at the bottom of each page.)

One last reminiscence. Susan Mosakowski, the director of the recorded book studio for the Library for the Blind in Manhattan, created many opportunities for the visually handicapped to come to the building to hear live performances, using the talents of the studio's volunteer narrators, many of whom were professional actors and voice-over artists. (And one was a mystery author.) A popular series was our re-enactment of old radio plays, often detective thrillers, but including a fine adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost. As someone who spent more time working the tape machine than actually reading, my role was often to handle the sound effects, a mix of live noises and prerecorded effects. I liked this play, because I got to make the sound of a suit of armor being attacked with peashooters.

Sylvia played the housekeeper of the ancient, haunted castle, which in the play was occupied by an American family -- she was like Young Frankenstein's Frau Blucher, only without the German accent or the horses. Near the beginning of the play, she came to the door to greet the newcomers with some innocuous remark like "Good morning" or just "Yes?" (Sorry, Sylvia, darling, I can't remember.) To herald this moment, I'd found a recording of the longest ever sound of a creaking door-hinge. (A word, incidentally, that does rhyme with "orange.")

So there's the set-up. Knock on door. Door opens with an interminable creak. Pause. Then Sylvia's voice.

It was always the funniest moment of the performance. Not my weird sound effect. Not Wilde's words, or whatever greeting the adapter had put in Sylvia's mouth.

It was her pause. Flawlessly, perfectly, shamelessly timed to the nanosecond.

Acting!

If you knew Suzi.

Foreigners like to depict Americans as being uninformed and uninterested about other countries, but that's a gross understatement. We don't know much about the other states within the US either.

I mean, who outside California can name its governor? It's bound to be somebody we've never heard of.*

But there is the slight chance that even non-New Yorkers have caught wind of the corruption and cronyism and deep dysfunctionality of our state government. Google the name of the capital, Albany, and every citation is preceded by the words "the mess in."

So today was election day, a chance to vote for a new governor. (To recap, Eliot Spitzer stepped down after a bare year in office following his involvement with a call-girl ring, although he's recently resurfaced as a pundit on CNN. His term was served out by his lieutenant governor David Paterson, famous beyond state borders for being regularly lampooned on "Saturday Night Live." But at least he doesn't shoot moose from a helicopter.)

It's also our chance to jiggle up the State Senate, although I ended up doing the knee-jerk thing and voting for Democratic incumbent Suzi Oppenheimer, who's already been a state senator for a quarter of a century.** This is despite my irritation with getting four recorded phone messages yesterday plugging her candidacy. Hey, I have all my lines forwarded to my cell phone, these are my minutes, guys!

But I'm already regretting it, if the phone call I got this afternoon is an indication of why things are so bad in Albany. It went something like this:

"This is Mrs. Brown. Am I speaking to Mr. Beechey?"

"Yes."

"Sir, I'm calling on behalf of the Suzi Oppenheimer campaign, and --"

"I already voted, you're too late."

"Oh, you did? Well, I just wanted to remind you that today is election day, and the polling stations are open from six o'clock to nine o'clock."

[Mystified] "I said I already voted. There's no point in telling me this. We're in New York, not Chicago."

"I see, sir. For verification can I have your first name?"

"I'd prefer not to. Anyway, don't you know who you called?'

"It's just for verification, Mr. Beechey. Why can't I have your first name?"

"Because I can't think of any reason why you'd need it."

"Then can I confirm that the number I called to reach you is [my home telephone number]."

"Yes, but why don't you know the number, since you just called it . . . ?"

A good job this gang isn't trying to shoot moose. At least it's not our tax dollars that are at work here. Alas, it soon will be.

*Yeah, right. And who's his lieutenant governor, Danny DeVito?

**Even her campaign slogan, a relentless exhortation to "Keep Suzi," was a reminder of her incumbency, a dubious tactic this year. I couldn't help taking it personally, since I have a recurring character called Susie Beamish in my books -- she features prominently in This Private Plot -- and I was wondering if I should bring her and her cleavage back for the fourth Swithin title, which I'm currently planning, even though it takes place in New York, not London.

I'm Plenty.

That Aston Martin DB5 used in Goldfinger sold over the weekend for $4.6 million, a little less than expected. But despite the chance of getting a bargain, the mem-sahib was not one of the bidders. I mean, it's not as if I hadn't dropped a hint or two. (See "Now, pay attention, 007.")

It's just like the time I wanted a Kandinsky I'd seen at Sotheby's. It wasn't even one of his later, more expensive works. But what do I get? Bupkis, that's what I get. Strike two.

More on peotry.

Kathi Taylor (praise be to her) commented on my pome "Ode to my bitch" that the "possum/awesome ('ossum')" rhyme, which I said wouldn't work in British English, might also bypass some versions of American English, too.

It works the other way round. Here's a clerihew what I wrote:

Lady Chatterley
Said: "Just latterly
I've dispensed with umbrellas;
Now I'm covered by Mellors."

But that only works in British English (maybe Boston, too), where the post-vocalic 'r' in Mellors isn't pronounced. (It would come out as "Mellahs.") It also means I couldn't rhyme Chatterley with "philately," which of course gets you everywhere, except in America. So here's a bi-lingual version:

Lady Chatterley
Said: "Just latterly
I've topped the best-sellers
Because of ten pages with Mellors."

Notes from a Halloween.

I buy the usual large bags of Halloween candy from the supermarket, miniature versions of well-known candy bars.

"'Fun-size,'" Primus cynically reads off the packet, as I decant the contents into a purple bucket to leave outside the door while we're out trick-or-treating. "They're a quarter the size of the normal bars. How is that fun?"

___

Primus and Secundus have each joined his own pack of marauding schoolfriends, and I'm left to accompany seven-year-old Tertius on his solo attempt to corner the world's candy supply. He's a biker skeleton. I'm a friar.

"Now what do you say when you knock on the door?" I rehearse.

"Trick or treat!" he replies.

"And what do you say when you get candy?"

"Thank you!"

"And if you don't get candy, you say . . . ?"

I trail off, the joke having been made (although this doesn't prevent the knee-jerk reproof from his nearby mother, which is what I was going for). But Tertius continues merrily:

"Well, I know the b-word, and the f-word, and . . ."

___

I'm talking to my friend and fellow-author and fellow-mother Annabel (plug for her book -- click here) about the costumes at Party City for grown-ups. Everything for women seems to be a sexy variation on a kid's classic, such as "Sexy Pirate," "Sexy Nurse," "Sexy Vampire."* But I lament that I never actually get to see these in the, er, flesh. Annabel informs me I'm clearly not getting invited to the right sort of party. Of course not. I have three small children, and I go to bed at ten o'clock.

Clearly not in Kansas anymore. 

But after an hour of chaperoning an avid trick-or-treater in temperatures that have dipped into the 40s and with a chill breeze blowing around my sandaled feet and up my friar's robe, I know why the young mothers of Rye prefer to cover up on Halloween. About the only tolerable costume would be "Mildly Risque Polar Bear."

___

This year, eleven-year-old Primus cashes in on his shoulder-length hair and decides to go out disguised as a girl. Wearing a pink top that he made me buy at Kohl's and with his mother's help to braid the hair and sweep it into a pony-tail, he's utterly convincing.

I applaud his courage. And as a father, I'm quite okay about it. Really, I am. No, really.

*That picture is a genuine 2010 Halloween costume downloaded from Party City's website. In researching it -- I suffer for you, Dear Reader -- I also found similarly skimpy versions for adult women of Hermione from Harry Potter, Wednesday Addams, and -- the horror! the horror! -- Big Bird and Elmo from "Sesame Street." (I knew Katy Perry's cleavage was the thin end of the wedge.) But the worst is a "sexy Betty Rubble." What a sacrilege! As if you anyone could make Betty Rubble any sexier than she is already.