Strappado - Laird Barron
Short Story
Number of words : 6000
Percent of complex words : 14.1
Average syllables per word : 1.6
Average words per sentence : 15.4
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 11.8
Flesch : 55.0
Flesch-Kincaid : 9.4
PEOPLE
Kenshi Suzuki
Called Ken. A naturalised US citizen. A jetsetting business type.
Swayne Harris
His occasional lover. Travels the world on art business.
Rashid Obi
An assistant to an executive producer at a local firm.
Luis Guzman
An elderly Argentinean in quasi-political exile. Public relations guru for a profoundly large international advertising conglomerate.
Picasso
An artist.
Hendrika
A weathergirl.
Andersen
Chief weather comptroller.
Fedor
Managed distribution for a major vodka label.
Françoise, Jean Michelle and Claude
French software developers.
Victor
A German photographer.
Nina
His assistant.
Raul
A Spanish advertising consultant.
Walther
A fat, American colonial barbarian.
Van Iblis
A macabre artist. Likes using dead bodies in exhibitions.
PLACES
Malta
An island country.
Gozo
An island belonging to Malta with cyclopean ruins.
Connecticut
A state of the USA.
The Golden Scale
A hotel in an Indian tourist town., eighty kilometres down the coast from grand old Mumbai.
Birmingham
City in England.
Timbuktu
City in Mali, Africa.
Bangalore
City in India.
Kolkata
City in India.
The Ivory Tiger
An hotel in the same tourist town.
MEDIA
Ghost of Christmas Past
From Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
CONCEPT
Darwin Award
Given to those whose incredible stupidity gets them killed in often spectacularly dumb fashion.
TECHNOLOGY
Hydrochloric Acid
A strong, highly corrosive compound.
Victrola
A phonograph, or early record player.
ORGANISATIONS
INTERPOL
An international policing organisation.
PLOT
Two occasional lovers meet while on business trips. This time, the pair end up going to a dive in a smaller Indian town for entertainment. There they meet a cosmopolitan band of fellow travellers and do some drinking.
They get invited to an exhibition by the artist Van Iblis, famous for his guerilla and macabre stagings, often involving the dead.
This involves being ordered to strip at balaclava and machete point, and being chosen for one of two doors. As it turns out, this means bad things with pits and acid barrels.
3.5 out of 5
Number of words : 6000
Percent of complex words : 14.1
Average syllables per word : 1.6
Average words per sentence : 15.4
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 11.8
Flesch : 55.0
Flesch-Kincaid : 9.4
PEOPLE
Kenshi Suzuki
Called Ken. A naturalised US citizen. A jetsetting business type.
Swayne Harris
His occasional lover. Travels the world on art business.
Rashid Obi
An assistant to an executive producer at a local firm.
Luis Guzman
An elderly Argentinean in quasi-political exile. Public relations guru for a profoundly large international advertising conglomerate.
Picasso
An artist.
Hendrika
A weathergirl.
Andersen
Chief weather comptroller.
Fedor
Managed distribution for a major vodka label.
Françoise, Jean Michelle and Claude
French software developers.
Victor
A German photographer.
Nina
His assistant.
Raul
A Spanish advertising consultant.
Walther
A fat, American colonial barbarian.
Van Iblis
A macabre artist. Likes using dead bodies in exhibitions.
PLACES
Malta
An island country.
Gozo
An island belonging to Malta with cyclopean ruins.
Connecticut
A state of the USA.
The Golden Scale
A hotel in an Indian tourist town., eighty kilometres down the coast from grand old Mumbai.
Birmingham
City in England.
Timbuktu
City in Mali, Africa.
Bangalore
City in India.
Kolkata
City in India.
The Ivory Tiger
An hotel in the same tourist town.
MEDIA
Ghost of Christmas Past
From Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
CONCEPT
Darwin Award
Given to those whose incredible stupidity gets them killed in often spectacularly dumb fashion.
TECHNOLOGY
Hydrochloric Acid
A strong, highly corrosive compound.
Victrola
A phonograph, or early record player.
ORGANISATIONS
INTERPOL
An international policing organisation.
PLOT
Two occasional lovers meet while on business trips. This time, the pair end up going to a dive in a smaller Indian town for entertainment. There they meet a cosmopolitan band of fellow travellers and do some drinking.
They get invited to an exhibition by the artist Van Iblis, famous for his guerilla and macabre stagings, often involving the dead.
This involves being ordered to strip at balaclava and machete point, and being chosen for one of two doors. As it turns out, this means bad things with pits and acid barrels.
3.5 out of 5