fighting vainly the old ennui (гет)

The Bowerbird wasn't playing fair; Jack couldn't debate these pieces of paper. He couldn't tell pieces of paper and a growing pile of feathers that he, too, remembered the rare treat that was eating a single piece of tropical fruit in the heavy heat of a Christmas afternoon, stickying his best suit of clothes, which had been so clean and pressed for church that morning.
(In which Inspector Jack Robinson is having a fairly uneventful year, divorce notwithstanding, until he acquires a lady doctor for a drinking buddy and receives a series of flirtatious notes from a jewel thief.)