We Are Often More Merciful

All Fiction Is Largely Autobiographical And Much Autobiography Is, Of Course, Fiction.

We Live In A Society Which Salves Its Conscience More By Helping The Interestingly Unfortunate Than The Dull Deserving.

Any Visitor To An Historic Country Town Or City Quickly Becomes Aware In His Or Her Peregrinations That The Most Attractive Houses In The Centre Are Invariably The Offices Of Lawyers.

He Didn't Want Her; He Wanted Me. Well, You Know How It Is." Dalgliesh Did Know. This, After All, Was The Commonest, The Most Banal Of Personal Tragedies. You Loved Someone. They Didn't Love You. Worse Still, In Defiance Of Their Own Best Interests And To The Destruction Of Your Peace, They Loved Another. What Would Half The World's Poets And Novelists Do Without This Universal Tragicomedy?

It Was Reasonable To Struggle, To Suffer, Perhaps Even To Die, For A More Just, A More Compassionate Society, But Not In A World With No Future Where, All To Soon, The Very Words "justice," "compassion," "society," "struggle," "evil," Would Be Unheard Echoes On An Empty Air.