What his writing always showed was a sense of how notions of law and order are in abeyance when men get desperate; and desperation, albeit infused with gallows humour, was the atmosphere Leonard's characters breathed.
In traditional makeup, seized with bouts of desperate laughter, he projects the notion that clowns are not -- to say the least -- always the sympathetic fall guys they seem to be in the ring.
Schools struggle to judge not only whether they are taking the incidents seriously enough, but also whether they are perhaps taking them too seriously, thereby reinforcing the notion among students desperate for attention that this is the way to get it.
I'm feeling desperate, absolutely desperate.
The straw that some desperate Labour MPs clutch to is the notion that Jeremy Corbyn will come to his own conclusion that he is not up to being leader and voluntarily depart at some point.
But serious suspension of disbelief is required if you are going to buy the notion that the distraught and desperate would have the psychological wherewithal to go shopping for a sufficiently literary farewell.
At that time, communities were so desperate for water, Ventura even floated the notion of towing icebergs down the coast from Alaska to provide some relief.
Reese dismissed the notion that Coughlin would be more desperate to win immediately than a first-year general manager would.
Walter may have wanted us to believe — and may, at moments, have convinced himself — that he was a decent man driven by desperate circumstances to do terrible things, but that notion was either wishful thinking or tactical deceit.
But, in a city desperate for direction and leadership, the media reported every notion that the commissions discussed.
