Referencing the Noir series, with which I do not actually have any affiliation.

http://ficly.com/stories/36620

Noir? You literally can’t escape the damned thing round here. The meta-reference is an interesting hook for your story, which is a good read and fairly purple in places, though I think it could be purpler (yes, I did say that) to fit the brief. You’re closest to the mark in your description of Mister Headington.

It’s that damned word count. You’re absolutely right – while I was quite verbose, it wasn’t purple prose.

I’ve collapsed the description of the lobby and extended the first section to make it even more flowery.

Yes, I can see that you have twiddled the saturation knob a little, to good effect.

The line between the verbose and the purple is fine but distinct. Sounds easy, on the face of it, to write something flowery and OTT, but looks like this is proving more difficult in practice.

I loved the line, “mundane monotone of meteorology,” and a hilarious allusion to our other ficly creation going on at the same time. Very fun entry.