Word: fiendishness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Middle Ages. "In 1255," according to contemporary Chronicler Matthew Paris, "the Jews of Lincoln stole a boy called Hugh, who was about eight years old." After fattening him up, they were said to have staged a mock re-enactment of the Crucifixion, killing little Hugh to the accompaniment of fiendish tortures. "When the boy was dead," Paris concludes, "they took the body down from the cross, and for some reason disemboweled it; it is said for the purpose of their magic arts." Other versions had Hugh enticed into a castle by "the Jew's daughter," who "laid...
...take the bang out of bombs, says that Britain's dud problem is getting worse instead of better. Of 505 unexploded bombs still on the Home Office charts, about 50% are considered "safe." But the rest range up to 4,600-lb. "Satans" equipped with multiple fuses of fiendish design-and the British are sure that there are hundreds more buried, unnoticed, deep in the soil. In many cases, the explosive is getting more sensitive as the years pass...
Whatever the faults of world leadership may have been, we now have "scientific fanatics" at the helm, with the fiendish ambition to propel humans into outer space...
...fully understood, worthy of a boy's wonder and solemn respect. Dr. Sax. the hawk-faced, silent, evil-battling spook whom Jack Duluoz invents (and then sees, fearfully, in every dark doorway), gets from place to place by grooking. Dr. Sax plays poker incessantly, has a high, fiendish laugh ("Mwee hee ha ha ha"). And when his stalking of the evil Great World Snake makes it necessary, he pulls a rubber boat out of his slouch hat, pumps it up and paddles across the Merrimack...
Author Duerrenmatt turns his plot so neatly that he cannot help licking his chops over it. His final ironic twist is both fiendish and plausible, but he leads up to it in a sententious, preachy chapter. And the carefully spelled-out fact that selflessness and faith were the road to Matthäi's breakdown creates an atmosphere of intense depression. But none of these shortcomings can really harm an unconventional and psychologically ingenious mystery story...