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The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul: Difference between revisions

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The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (view source)

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* [[The Alleged Car]]: Kate's Citroën 2CV is the [[Trope Namer]] -- at one point she's in court for a traffic mishap (her car threw a wheel and nearly caused an accident) and a police officer refers to it as "the alleged car", and the name sticks.
* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]:
{{quote| King's Cross Station is a scary place, full of muggers, pimps, drug-pushers and hamburger salesmen. If you want cheap sex, a quick fix or -- God help you -- a hamburger, this is where you can find it.}}
* [[Baleful Polymorph]]: Thor does this by accident when he's angry, thus setting off the events of the novel. His many unfortunate victims include a lamp, an airline ticket clerk, and {{spoiler|a fighter jet}}.
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* [[It Came From the Fridge]]: Dirk and his cleaning lady absolutely refuse to open his fridge, and try to trick others into opening it. He eventually has to call a fence to take his fridge away and replace it with a brand new, stolen one, which he vows never to use. {{spoiler|The old one has a god of Guilt burst from it to resolve the plot, in a [[Deus Ex Machina]].}}
* [[It Can Think]]: Dirk has quite a shock when he peeks through the keyhole at the eagle and sees it ''looking back at him''.
* [[Laser -Guided Karma]]: Whatever Dirk claims to believe in order to extract cash from gullible people invariably turns out to really be true, but always in such a way that he looks bad, sometimes in such a way that he suffers physical or emotional trauma, and never in such a way that he gets the money.
* [[Necktie Leash]]: Kate uses this one on Dirk, who subverts a repeated use by taking off his tie and handing it to her.
* [[Never Heard That One Before]]:
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"No. What happens is that everybody looks very shifty for a moment, and you got that very well." }}
** Also, everyone and their dog keeps asking Dirk if he knows his nose is broken.
* [[Ninety Percent of Your Brain]]: Kate, shortly before awakening from a coma in a hospital, has a dream in which her mind is represented by an infinite collection of cabin trunks, of which ten percent contain past memories, and the remaining ninety percent contain [[EverythingsEverything's Better With Penguins|penguins]]. She assumes this trope is in effect.
* [[Norse Mythology]]
* [[Not So Phony Psychic]]: Dirk's attempt to make some easy money as a gypsy fortune teller (in drag) goes wrong when the random mystical nonsense he spouts turns out to be uncomfortably accurate.
* [[Occult Detective]]
* [[Self -Deprecation]]: A minor character is a writer named Howard Bell. It is stated that his writing is absolutely horrible, but he remains wildly popular and successful for two reasons: he deliberately cultivates an air of freakish mystery, and his name is perfect for a book cover because the first name is long and the last name is short. On his books, his first name is written in a medium-sized blocky font followed by his last name in a larger font, so that his name fills out the cover and upstages the title. Bell is probably a [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]] version of [[Stephen King]], but still, it's funny to see that character created by someone named Douglas Adams.
* [[Stalker Without a Crush]]: Dirk explains that he will pick a random car to follow if he gets lost while he's driving. He finds that while he seldom gets where he intended, he always ends up where he needed to be.
* [[Unusually Uninteresting Sight]]: The elderly lady who witnesses Thor's battle with the eagle on Primrose Hill simply resumes walking her dog as soon as the combatants move out of the way.
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