Bulwer-Lytton Awards: Crime/Detective Category

I love the Bulwer-Lytton Awards. They're always such fun, especially for readers. Following: The Winner and Runners-up in the Crime/Detective Category.

Conceived to honor the memory of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton and to encourage unpublished authors who do not have the time to actually write entire books, the contest challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Bulwer was selected as patron of the competition because he opened his novel "Paul Clifford" (1830) with the immortal words, "It was a dark and stormy night." Lytton’s sentence actually parodied the line and went on to make a real sentence of it, but he did originate the line "The pen is mightier than the sword," and the expression "the great unwashed." His best known work, one on the book shelves of many of our great-grandparents, is The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), an historical novel that has been adapted for film multiple times.

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

 --Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

2017 Winner, Crime/Detective
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• Detective Sam Steel stood at the crime scene staring puzzled at the chalk outline of Ms. Mulgrave's body which was really just a stick figure with a dress, curly hair, boobs, and a smiley face because the police chalk guy had the day off.  — Doug Self, Brunswick, Maine

Dishonorable Mentions, Crime/Detective:

• She walked into my office and brayed, “I want you to put a tail on my husband.” — Steve Lynch, Tuscon, Arizona

• The warehouse was completely empty except for the mutilated corpse wearing a tuxedo covered with bloodstains, and a Mortimer Snerd dummy lying nearby on the floor, and Detective McIntosh knew Snerd wouldn’t talk. — Doug Purdy, Roseville, California

• “Not cucumber sandwiches again,” Earl “The Embezzler” DeWitt’s thoughts turned dark as he trudged through the chow line at Hummingbird State Correctional Institute, lamenting his culinary fate for the thousandth time and dreaming of the greasy sloppy joe he might be enjoying instead, if he’d only committed a manly felony, like murder, and ended up at Riker’s instead of this ersatz country club for white-collar wimps. — Maureen Donohue, Paso Robles, California

• The church was deathly quiet: suddenly a shot rang out, a woman screamed, and somewhere in the back, a baby cried because that baby hadn't been taken to the nursery, even though the sign on the door clearly states that babies should be taken to the nursery.— Mark Schweizer, Tryon, North Carolina

• As hard-boiled detective Max Baxter ate his soft-boiled egg, he thought about the gorgeous dame he'd found last night lying in a pool of her own blood—it being inconvenient to lie in a pool of someone else's blood—and wondered how she liked her eggs.— Pam Tallman, Huntington Beach, California

• Detective Robertson knew he had Joyce Winters dead to rights for the murder—at the crime scene he had found Winters’ fingerprints, shell casings matching the gun registered to her, and, most damning of all, a Starbucks cup with the name “Josie” scrawled on it.— Doug Purdy, Roseville, California

• Nobody messed with Rocky “The Anvil' Roselli, the toughest, badass mob enforcer that ever walked the mean streets of downtown LA, but for some time now he had been considering an alternative career in interior design, a secret kept well hidden from his felonious contemporaries; like a strawberry jam sandwich lying buried at the bottom of a sack of brussels sprouts.— Ted Downes, Cardiff, Wales

• “It’s a classic,” she muttered, as she flicked the hair from the old fur coat purchased from eBay for sixty-eight dollars plus overnight shipping for the purpose of this very moment when she stuck out her hip, pulled the trigger, and shot him in that stupid face of his.— Beth Armogida, Sierra Madre, California

• So many questions raced through the heiress's mind: Who had killed the maid and which guests were lying to her and who the hell was going to clean up all this goddamned blood because it sure as hell wasn't going to be her, she could tell you that much.— Samantha Bates, Columbia, Tennessee

• The horizontal array of rectangular golden sunshafts that filtered through my shutters was interrupted by a statuesque silhouette appearing at my office door, her widow’s pillbox with netted veil only slightly obscuring her opalescent eyes, her alabaster décolletage accented by a sizeable amethyst pendant, and a silky floor-length ebony gown that revealed a muffin-top that clearly lacked of any kind of abdominal exercise regimen. — Peter S. Bjorkman, Rocklin, California

• Captain Duke Ellsworth of the Poughkeepsie Police Department wondered, as he stood in the brightly lit room and stared at the gun lying on the floor, if its barrel were still warm, and what his wife was making for dinner that evening, which he would no doubt have to eat cold when he finally finished up here, especially if he paid his mistress in Fishkill a visit on the way home. — Rich Zaleski, Stevenson, Connecticut

Bulwer-Lytton Awards 2016

I can't believe I neglected to post the Bulwer-Lytton Awards. They're always such fun, especially for readers. Following: The Overall Winner and the winners and runners-up in the Crime/Detective Category.

Conceived to honor the memory of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton and to encourage unpublished authors who do not have the time to actually write entire books, the contest challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Bulwer was selected as patron of the competition because he opened his novel "Paul Clifford" (1830) with the immortal words, "It was a dark and stormy night." Lytton’s sentence actually parodied the line and went on to make a real sentence of it, but he did originate the line "The pen is mightier than the sword," and the expression "the great unwashed." His best known work, one on the book shelves of many of our great-grandparents, is The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), an historical novel that has been adapted for film multiple times.

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

 --Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

2016 OVERALL WINNER:

Even from the hall, the overpowering stench told me the dingy caramel glow in his office would be from a ten-thousand-cigarette layer of nicotine baked on a naked bulb hanging from a frayed wire in the center of a likely cracked and water-stained ceiling, but I was broke, he was cheap, and I had to find her.
 
--William "Barry" Brockett, Tallahassee, FL

Brockett is a 55-year-old building contractor who has specialized in additions, home makeovers, and bathroom/kitchen remodels for about twenty years. His particular enjoyment is reading, with true crime and the "hardboiled" genre being his favorites, hence his winning entry. 

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Winner, Crime/Detective:

• She walked toward me with her high heels clacking like an out-of-balance ceiling fan set on low, smiling as though about to spit pus from a dental abscess, and I knew right away that she was going to leave me feeling like I had used a wood rasp to cure my hemorrhoids. — Charles Caldwell, Leesville, LA

Dishonorable Mentions, Crime/Detective:

• “We got a stiff on the sidewalk all bled out; a stiff on a tugboat tied up with enough cement to build the Hoover Dam; Louie Miller empties out his bank account and falls off the face of the planet; Jenny Diver, Sukey Tawdry, Lotte Lenya, and Lucy Brown all get death threats . . . I got no goddamned proof, but five’ll get ya ten that Macky’s back in town.”  — William Lattanzio, Boyertown, PA

• Detective Hammer Logan III woke with a start, images of the bizarre bayou murder still fresh in his mind’s eye—a dame in trouble, body covered with bloody toothprints and saliva—but as sleep lifted, the grizzled detective remembered that he was a dog and the dame a coyote, so he spun on the bed three times and slept the rest of the day. — Jacob Smith, Dallas, TX

• As he gazed at Ming's lifeless body draped over the sushi bar, chopsticks protruding from his back, Det. Herc Lue Perrot came to the sobering realization that tonight, there had been a murder at the Orient Express. — Andrew Caruso, Akron, OH

Bulwer Lytton Awards: 2011

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

 --Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

 To See all the Bulwer-Lytton 2011 Winners, Runners Up & 'Dishonorable Mentions', go HERE.

2011 OVERALL WINNER:

Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.
-- Sue Fondrie, Oshkosh, WI

The winner of the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is Sue Fondrie, an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh who works groan-inducing wordplay into her teaching and administrative duties whenever possible. Out of school, she introduces two members of the next generation to the mysteries of Star Trek, Star Wars, and--of course--the art of the bad pun.

Prof. Fondrie is the 29th grand prize winner of the contest that that began at San Jose State University in 1982. The contest challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels takes its name from the Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who began his “Paul Clifford” with “It was a dark and stormy night.”

At 26 words, Prof. Fondrie’s submission is the shortest grand prize winner in Contest history, proving that bad writing need not be prolix, or even very wordy.

Winner: Adventure
From the limbs of ancient live oaks moccasins hung like fat black sausages -- which are sometimes called boudin noir, black pudding or blood pudding, though why anyone would refer to a sausage as pudding is hard to understand and it is even more difficult to divine why a person would knowingly eat something made from dried blood in the first place -- but be that as it may, our tale is of voodoo and foul murder, not disgusting food.
--Jack Barry, Shelby, NC

Winner: Crime
Wearily approaching the murder scene of Jeannie and Quentin Rose and needing to determine if this was the handiwork of the Scented Strangler--who had a twisted affinity for spraying his victims with his signature raspberry cologne--or that of a copycat, burnt-out insomniac detective Sonny Kirkland was sure of one thing: he’d have to stop and smell the Roses.
--Mark Wisnewski, Flanders, NJ

Winner: Historical Fiction
Napoleon’s ship tossed and turned as the emperor, listening while his generals squabbled as they always did, splashed the tepid waters in his bathtub.
--John Doble, New York City

Winner: Purple Prose
As his small boat scudded before a brisk breeze under a sapphire sky dappled with cerulean clouds with indigo bases, through cobalt seas that deepened to navy nearer the boat and faded to azure at the horizon, Ian was at a loss as to why he felt blue.
--Mike Pedersen, North Berwick, ME

Winner: Romance
As the dark and mysterious stranger approached, Angela bit her lip anxiously, hoping with every nerve, cell, and fiber of her being that this would be the one man who would understand—who would take her away from all this—and who would not just squeeze her boob and make a loud honking noise, as all the others had.
--Ali Kawashima, Greensboro, NC

Winner: Sci Fi
Morgan ‘Bamboo’ Barnes, Star Pilot of the Galaxia (flagship of the Solar Brigade), accepted an hors d’oeuvre from the triangular-shaped platter offered to him from the Princess Qwillia—lavender-skinned she was and busty, with two of her four eyes what Barnes called ‘bedroom eyes’—and marveled at how on her planet, Chlamydia-5, these snacks were called ‘Hi-Dee-Hoes’ but on Earth they were simply called Ritz Crackers with Velveeta.
--Greg Homer,Placerville, CA

Winner: Vile Puns
Detective Kodiak plucked a single hair from the bearskin rug and at once understood the grisly nature of the crime: it had been a ferocious act, a real honey, the sort of thing that could polarize a community, so he padded quietly out the back to avoid a cub reporter waiting in the den.
--Joe Wyatt, Amarillo, TX

Winner: Western
The laser-blue eyes of the lone horseman tracked the slowly lengthening lariat of a Laredo dawn as it snaked its way through Dead Man’s Pass into the valley below and snared the still sleeping town’s tiny church steeple in a noose of light with the oh-so-familiar glow of a Dodge City virgin’s last maiden blush.
--Graham Thomas, St. Albans, Hertfordshire, U.K.