Once again, Decoder Ring Theater presents another page from the casebook of that Master of Mystery.

That's Sultan of Sleuthing, Martin Bracknell's immortal detective, Black Jack Justice, starring Christopher Mott as Jack and Andrea Lyons as Trixie Dixon Girl Detective.

The name's Dixon.

Trixie Dixon, girl detective.

Those who follow these little tales of danger and daring do

will note that we often like to open up the proceedings with a cliche or two

and deconstruct downwards from there.

It affords a girl detective the opportunity to elevate the discourse above the sort of cheap banter and lurid suggestions

that constitute the bulk of the casework at Justice and Dixon, private investigations,

to say nothing of the average Saturday night. Or maybe that's just me. But when we turn our attention

to the month of December, dear friends, we encounter a phenomenon some call option paralysis. That

being the tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none. There are quite simply too many

cliches to choose from,

and each passing year seems to give birth to more.

These last few weeks, the radio had been feeding me a generous helping

of an appealing boy singer named Perry Como,

warbling a brand-new chestnut that suggested there was no place like Home for the Holidays.

This was true. There was nowhere and no time for the Holidays. This was true.

There was nowhere and no time of the year

where that much barely concealed, bitterness,

resentment, and out-and-out disappointment

could be combined with that much rum

...