Lois McMaster Bujold is just. Really good at giving you a tense situation, making it unexpectededly funny the next moment, and then gutpunching you the moment afterwards, like this standoff in Cetaganda:
But of course. Lord X always used front men, and women, for his legwork, keeping his own hands clean. Miles had been galloping around doing the legwork; therefore, Lord X must have reasoned that Ivan was really in charge. “Agh!” Miles cried. “What did you think? That because he’s taller, and, and cuter, he had to be running this show? It’s the haut way, isn’t it? You—you morons! I’m the brains of this outfit!” He paced the other way, spluttering. “I had you spotted from Day One, don’t you know? But no! Nobody ever takes me seriously!” Ivan’s eyes, the only part of him that apparently still worked, widened at this rant. “So you went and kidnapped the wrong man. You just blew your cover for the sake of grabbing the expendable one!” The haut Pel hadn’t gone for help, he decided. She’d gone to the lav to fix her hair, and was going to take forever in there. Well, he certainly had the undivided attention of everyone in the loading bay, murderess, victim, haut-cops and all. What next, handsprings? “It’s been like this since we were little kids, y’know? Whenever the two of us were together, they’d always talk to him first, like I was some kind of idiot alien who needed an interpreter—” the haut Pel reappeared silently in the doorway, lifted her hand—Miles’s voice rose to a shout, “Well, I’m sick of it, d’you hear?!”
