Tammy’s Reviews > Murder Must Advertise > Status Update

DB asks about Joe, the red-headed rooftop PE boy that is called Ginger. He asks about cats. Only one. Then sparrows none. The rain pours, and they close up doors and windows since it is cool. They are six floors up. Folks in the conference room are watching people outside. One woman walks in the lobby and asks for DB. She is Pamela Dean on private business. She people watches while waiting. A lost art.

DB turns down a non-alcholic tonic; Ingleby gives the most subversive MAHA quote of the book, going well with my anti-UPC mood right now. Then he goes to the awful things we do to skin, and it turns out now that a little dirt memes the immune system. Are the lightning flash and thunder crash a warning about fooling with Mother Nature? He thinks Willis knows something and asks more questions about him and Dean.

To cover his descent down the pipe, he tosses the coins to strengthen his image of being a fool. Harlequins were known for acrobatics. He is covered in soot, so he has to make up some kind of story. The soot goes well with the descent imagery. He also quotes Wordsworth. One can easily imagine why his family chucked him. Even more foolish, he learned that he could have taken the stairs to find what he dropped. Barking

I'm still a beginner, but Harlequin in the title points to DB's change of identity. To catch the murderer he is acting mad and foolish so that nobody will detect that he is a detective. The Wonderland comment made me think of descent and ascent imagery. He ascends to gain wisdom because he wants to check out something important. He descends down the pipe to get something that mat be a clue based on his hypothesis.

Inglewood is short with the client who asks to see DB. Armstrong has to search for him. The ad has three blanks, and the client thinks the newspaper will reject it as cursing. DB was on the roof. When asked about illustrations, he quotes Anne I think. Then he talks about Lewis Carroll and a drawing of muchness. He also suggests a blank emoji! They think DB is cross. Is that slang for mad?

Due to a visit from a separate puritanical client, all female employees were told NOT to smoke and to show less skin, putting Miss Parton (hahaha) on edge. The agency had to sanitize (IUSS term) all alcohol advertising. Mr. Pym’s partner (Armstrong) has a toothache and one of the typewriters is on the fritz. What could go wrong? The room feels like a sweatbox at Mother B.

The session ends with a couple of changes. It takes about two hours! In the end, they just have to adjust the layout and make new proofs. Since the client is so picky, they often handcarry the copy to the newspaper to avoid problems. Even the placement in the newspaper is particular. On this particular Tuesday, the top floor of the agency with its glass roof was hot due to a pending thunderstorm.

There’s a lot of technical details here about the printmaking process when the sketch is done. It’s not like today with our ease of printing. Everythinig is turned on on Friday’s so that the proofs are ready by Tuesday morning. The process includes the client offering destructive criticism rather than constructive with Pym and Armstrong being unable to explain how it happened. They hypnotize the clients with words.

Almost podcast time. Ch. 4 They have a weekly blood bath because of one proprietor with multiple accounts who visits every Tuesday. They keep key people locked in the conference room for two hours. They revoke previous decisions, propose crazy ideas, and make them quiestion their choices in life. The only tactic that seems to work is to send them a flood of copy to keep the clients busy and off their backs.