Info-dumping

The info-dump is always a problem. Just at a basic practical level it is important that everyone addresses everyone else by name until at least the first death — in fact detective stories have as much trouble as alien planets, and there’s a very good example of (deliberate) bad info-dumping right at the start of The Real Inspector Hound where Mrs. Drudge answers the phone: ‘Hello? The drawing room of Lady Muldoon’s country residence one morning in early spring?’ […]

Forget the obvious villainy of metal-haired space lady Madeleine Issigri and the incessant info-dumping of the ridiculously plummy General Hermack.

They came to unwind, to debrief their minds of the endless info-dumping that bombarded them at work, at home, in the media, in the street.