PITTSBURGH — It's not always easy to pinpoint the origin of a cliché, but many of them come from literary fiction. In particular, what we call "genre fiction" — mysteries, crime thrillers and whodunits — has contributed so many of the common phrases in our lexicon.
Take, for example, "the butler did it." It's a great phrase that does a lot of work in a very little amount of space. It evokes the image of a tired and overburdened attendant, angry at his employers for some slight or an accumulation of them, ready to kill with discretion while maintaining the practiced, chilly demeanor that comes with his station.
It's also, it turns out, a phrase with Pittsburgh origins.
