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A review by leesmyth
The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
5.0
It's beautifully written and sharply observed. There's something in the set-up and unfolding of the plot that reminds me a little of Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday (innocent, everyday interactions turning, absurdly, into horror and intrigue). I did guess a few of the twists, but it did not lessen my pleasure in the least.
Just two more of the many passages I loved:
p. 88:
A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man – a man who takes either tea or coffee for breakfast, a man who likes a good book and perhaps reads biography rather than fiction, a man who at a regular hour goes to bed, who tries to develop good physical habits but possibly suffers from constipation, who prefers either dogs or cats and has certain views about politics.
p. 201:
'He's going away?'
'Yes.'
'With the photographs, of course.'
'Yes.'
'We've got to stop him,' he said. The 'we' like the French tu spoken for the first time conveyed everything.
'Yes.'
Just two more of the many passages I loved:
p. 88:
A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man – a man who takes either tea or coffee for breakfast, a man who likes a good book and perhaps reads biography rather than fiction, a man who at a regular hour goes to bed, who tries to develop good physical habits but possibly suffers from constipation, who prefers either dogs or cats and has certain views about politics.
p. 201:
'He's going away?'
'Yes.'
'With the photographs, of course.'
'Yes.'
'We've got to stop him,' he said. The 'we' like the French tu spoken for the first time conveyed everything.
'Yes.'