Word: crimeeds
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...slang for big shots), has pillaged the country's oil wealth for generations, 80% of Venezuela's people live in poverty--and each year, searching for jobs, they scratch their way onto Caracas' perilous mountainside real estate. In those vertical, collapsible slums, potable water is a luxury, and violent crime is among the worst in South America. "We live in a constant state of emergency," said one rancho community leader...
MURDER INC. Crime and fame make a lethal cocktail. This century, the public drank...
...writing Ripley, Highsmith had two bolts of brilliance. The first was to let the bad guy get away with his crimes. All mystery writers are murderers; they get into the mind, under the skin, of a killer, if only to determine how the foul deed can be accomplished. Then, typically, they bring in a detective to unravel the plot and cuff the culprit. Highsmith simply ditched the civilized pretense of justice avenged. She tore the final, comeuppance chapter out of Ripley's story, left him giddy with triumph--and let him flourish in four more books. The snake, having shed...
...crime writers are killers, all actors are liars--Ripleys for their art and glory. Highsmith's Tom thinks of himself in moments of stress as a consummate actor thrilled by the conviction of his deceit. "If you wanted to be cheerful, or melancholic, or wistful, or thoughtful, or courteous," he observes, "you simply had to act those things with every gesture." What is acting if not the forgery of someone else's personality in order to possess and consume...
...Ripley himself... I often had the feeling Ripley was writing it and I was merely typing." In gratitude, she kept him forever young. The novels span 36 years, and each is set in the present; yet Tom ages only about a decade. He is the Dorian Gray of crime...