"Twenty Days with Julian and Little Bunny, by Papa," as the extract is titled, seems an unlikely project for Auster, who is more commonly thought of as a modern, philosophical novelist than as a sentimental one - "philosophical both in the sense of devoted to thought, and in the sense of fatalistic, stoically accepting life's vagaries", to quote one painstaking dissection of his style.
Spiral's biggest triumph is in mixing the high-octane thrills of a strong police procedural – foot chases, murders and shock twists – with the sophisticated, State of Play-style dissection of endemic corruption: patronage, cover-ups and career-long vendettas.
One week into his reign, Saudi Arabia's new king has reshuffled senior government officials, catching insiders by surprise and starting a "Kremlinology -style dissection of what the new names mean for policy and direction.
You can transform any polygon to any other polygon of equal area through a Haberdasher's Puzzle-style hinged dissection.
What follows represents a successful cross-fertilisation of the surreal celebrity gatherings of Insignificance (Marilyn Monroe and Einstein) or Hysteria (Freud and Dali) and the dissection of Benny Hill-style humour that made Dead Funny so poignantly funny.
The concept is actually a well-tested and popular one in the analog world: fashion magazines high and low love to present candid street style pictures with subsequent dissections for readers about how and where to "get the look".
For me his three-show stint in Bailey's chair was something of a disappointment - Fielding came across as a bit too self-satisfied and there was an uncomfortable amount of truth in Amstell's dissection of the Mighty Boosh star's comic style during this verbal joust.
By now you'll either love or loathe her verbose dissections of male-female relations and rhyme-free writing style, neither of which has moved on since 1998's Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.
But Ms. Scott Thomas, who begins the show with a smashing, Dietrich-style cabaret performance, serves up a hypnotic dissection of the feminine type called fatale, a woman who is only, as the play's title suggests, the sum of the projected desires of others.
And the evening dresses in slippery satin, ruched and clasped with crystal reimaginings of the metal clips used in school dissection seemed vaguely sinister in origin – although, in true contradictory Kane signature style, these dresses were among the most elegant and desirable on the catwalk.
