Word: enigma
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...most respects, Madeleine is a brilliant job of moviemaking, but a disappointing movie. It succeeds in making the crime a tantalizing enigma-which in itself may leave some cinemagoers feeling cheated-at the cost of making its leading character too enigmatic to invite either sympathy or censure. Madeleine (Ann Todd) seems inadequately drawn, inconsistent and unreal. The story's conflicts grow out of hidebound Victorian conventions, and these are pictured so stiffly, e.g., in the character of Leslie Banks as Madeleine's priggish father, that some of the situations resemble showboat melodrama...
After eight months of hearings and three more of a process that the bureaucrats call deliberating, the Federal Communications Commission handed down a semifinal decision on color television. Like many FCC decisions, it proved an enigma wrapped in federalese and tied with red tape...
...book reviewer's disclosure of the denouement of a mystery novel-whether it be called a detective story, a novel of suspense, or merely "an enigma"-has always been generally regarded as a cross between torn peepery and violation of a blindman's cup. Turning to the last page of any book requires no great critical acumen . . . Yet surprise is the mystery writer's stock in trade ... To rob him of this stock in trade by wholesale revelation in a review is not only unethical but actually damaging ... I am surprised, therefore, that TIME'S reviewer...
Author Bentley's trouble is that he has turned out neither a mystery nor a thriller, something Bentley seems to realize since he modestly decides that perhaps his book is only an "enigma." The real enigma is that the author of Trent's Last Case got stopped in his tracks so near the foot of John Buchan's steps...
Shotgun v. Pistol. Walton Walker is not a colorful prima donna, or an affable diplomat, or a profound strategist, or an egoist with a flair for drama. Military historians will probably not quarrel lengthily over his capabilities; psychologists will not find him an enigma. In World War II he fought as Patton wanted him to; in Korea, he will fight as MacArthur wants him to-however much retreats and holding actions may go against his grain. If ordered to hold, he will stand and fight to the last man, including Walton Walker. He is, in every sense of the phrase...