Word: villainized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...disease produces high fever, delirium, and painfully swollen lymph glands form dark discolorations called buboes; death follows massive internal bleeding. People infected with the most virulent, pneumonic form can infect others by sneezing. The villain is a bacillus, Pasteurella pestis, which thrives in rats, the fleas that bite them, and humans exposed to either pest. Destroying fleas and keeping rats from migrating curb the plague, but Viet Nam's fleas have grown more resistant to available insecticides; and, for example, there are only four quarantine inspectors to see that busy harbor ships keep a constant guard against invading rats...
With its wild notions of what constitutes evidence, Edwards' book compounds one mystery by creating others. Nor does it help his case for an imminent apocalypse to explain flaws in the brief by making the U.S. Air Force the villain of a conspiracy to suppress the truth; he believes that the Pentagon's reassuring statements about UFOs are designed to hoodwink the public into supposing that they are psychological, meteoric, or astral in origin. Nor is sinister Air Force activity confined to the U.S. "What," he asks, "was the mysterious substance that dribbled from a crippled disk over...
These three novels might be described as documents of the vague and nervous neutralism to which Britain's intellectuals incline, a neutralism in which the villain is just as likely to be the CIA or MI-5 as the KGB, or in which the security system itself is made an object of loathing and derision. Precisely because they are popular, such books may indicate a state of mind. Together they may suggest a trend of British thought in marked divergence from that...
...Free Country, disguised as a thriller, is a fable that might have been concocted by an unusually simple-minded fellow traveler. The villain of the piece is the British security system, which is apparently feeble enough to let a Burgess and Maclean, a Philby or Vassall, go undetected for years, but is eager to winkle out a man of the people of leftist leanings who just happens to handle sensitive hardware. He is a noble, rugged, beer-drinking type who had fought against Hitler and Franco, and his consort is a very nice schoolteacher married to someone else. The jilted...
...faggoty Edwardian fop who flounces around an op-art seaside castle that looks rather like marzipan. Under a lavender parasol, he sips bluish liquids from a huge goblet with a goldfish swimming in its depths, keeps languorous boys and a sadistic lady psychopath on the premises. "I am the villain of the piece, and I have to condemn you to death," he purrs to Modesty. To which she purrs back": "But I am the heroine. Don't I get away...