Jeffrey Archer's short story "Broken Routine" appears in his 1980 collection A Quiver Full of Arrows. These stories typically feature final plot twists in the style of O. Henry and Saki, and "Broken Routine," in particular, depends on such a twist for its effect. It begins by describing, in some detail, the unremarkable life of a man called Septimus Horatio Cornwallis, whose name is the most interesting thing about him. Cornwallis seems to take pride in following precisely the same routine every day, as he commutes from his conventional home to his boring office job at an insurance company.

After spending the first half of the story establishing Cornwallis's precise routine, the author devotes the second half to describing one day on which it was "not merely interfered with, but frankly, shattered." Traveling home one evening, Cornwallis buys a packet of cigarettes and a newspaper, as he always does. When he is on the train, however, a dangerous-looking young man takes one of his cigarettes and smokes it without asking permission. Cornwallis does not confront him, but also starts smoking, and the two men, glaring at each other, go through the pack, taking one cigarette after another. The young man also makes a grab for his newspaper, and the two of them each end up with half of it.

Cornwallis finally destroys the last cigarette and rips up the newspaper. When he picks up his briefcase to leave the train, he discovers a newspaper and an unopened packet of cigarettes. The implication, therefore, is that the cigarettes he smoked and the newspaper he destroyed actually belonged to the young man.

It is worth noting that variations on this story have often been told as fact by various raconteurs, most notably Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In 1985, he told essentially the same story on the David Letterman show.