I have to admit, I couldn't get into this story at all. I loved her first story but she's gotten a bit...wordy, if you know what I mean. And you asked me about my lot, and they stirred in me, as even the driest leaf stirs, as petals and newspaper cuttings do, the whispering dead. Do people really think like that?


Certainly not, Doyle, I agree! *g* But aside from that unlikely first person bit, I think the rest of the poetic flight is lovely.

Summer, and the sycamores in full leaf in all the dusty squares. The heat of the air made a virtue, a pleasant change, of Doyle's shot-out windshield, and he tore grinning down the Southwark side street to the pickup point where his partner was waiting in the road, affectedly ignoring his approach. Doyle stopped the statutory three inches off his right kneecap. "Oh, it's you," Bodie said when the screech of brakes and tyres had died, examining the jagged hole. "Someone been shooting at you, old son?"

That intro always makes me smile -- we see similar moments of dangerous fooling in canon -- and the dusty scent of sycamores makes it pop alive.