Word: unraveling
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Mafia, would try to streamline the story, infuse action into a narrative that is mostly lawyers chatting, give an emotional history to characters who are basically plot props and . . . please, a new ending. Grisham spun a lovely yarn -- the venality, the conspiracy, the flypaper guilt -- then let it unravel at the denouement. His climax had the hero in a Florida motel waiting for a FedEx package...
...hugging suits for downhill skiers. Over the past four years, Lewis has played the attentive host to dozens of fist-size spiders called golden orb weavers, housing them in Plexiglas condominiums, feeding them a daily diet of flies and, every now and then, flipping them on their backs to unravel yards of gossamer thread. The ambitious goal of all this effort: to unravel the secrets of spider silk, a family of materials stronger than steel, stretchier than nylon and tougher than Kevlar, the stuff used to make bulletproof vests...
KINSHASA, ZAIRE -- HOME TO 4 million people -- is no place to live. The city's social fabric has been fraying for years, but in September 1991 it started to unravel completely. The crisis began when a group of elite government troops, angry because they had not been paid for months, went on a looting spree that was quickly joined by civilians. During the next few days, nearly $1 billion worth of property, from clothes to computers, was pillaged. After the rampage, foreign businessmen -- and foreign money -- fled the city. The economy collapsed. Since the government now has almost no money...
...more conscientious among them are doing so because they think if they can learn the quirks and explore the oddities of this small Southern state, they'll be able to unravel Clinton's quirks and oddities. The same reporters who explained President Bush as a product of New England aloofness and Texas conservatism are now constructing a Bill Clinton out of their few weeks in his home state...
WITH THE FALL OF COMMUNISM, DOUBLE AGENTS seem more likely to inhabit novels than real life these days. But Cuban exile Francisco Avila Azcuy claims he was just that -- a double agent spying on exile commandos in Miami for Fidel Castro while helping the FBI unravel Cuba's espionage network in the U.S. Not uncoincidentally, a Cuban diplomat at the U.N. was expelled after the Spanish- language Miami TV station WSCV secretly videotaped the official discussing a prospective exile raid on Cuba with Avila...