| Benjamin Black makes pointed asides about the dullness of Agatha Christie, and about the patness of mystery stories that resolve their loose ends too tidily. |
| The setup's almost laughably pat, and nothing that follows mitigates that patness. |
| Hence the book's picaresque quality — it is a string of anecdotes — and also, at times, a certain patness in the comedy. |
| But Mukherjee's primary bulwark against patness is a piece of formal daring. |
| But there are some obvious problems here, including metaphorical patness and the fact that it almost certainly couldn't have happened that way. |
| At least one phrase may have lost its patness since the tobacco report was issued. |
