Word: greeneland
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...ultimately no one is pure in Deighton's 17th spy novel. Intrigues misfire; disease kills more effectively than bullets; and corruption becomes the order of the day. Even so, the characters are shrewdly delineated, and the suspense continues until the final paragraph. Moral ambiguity used to be called Greeneland. Since Graham Greene's death, that territory is open for conquest. At least a part of it ought to be renamed Deightonsville...
Greene did not dream up this terrain of momentous border crossings and casual betrayals, and he could be peevish with those who praised his inventiveness: "Some critics have referred to a strange violent 'seedy' region of the mind (why did I ever popularize that last adjective?) which they call Greeneland, and I have sometimes wondered whether they go round the world blinkered. 'This is Indochina,' I want to exclaim, 'this is Mexico, this is Sierra Leone carefully and accurately described.' " But on his journeys the author carried a transforming talent and temperament that rendered all the places, no matter...