It mainly deals in caricatures crooked politicians, rage-filled cops, hypocritical wealthy liberals, criminals who are evil incarnate but the musical format gives space to figures who are usually pushed to the margins of police programs.
But then there comes this evil battle for a certain format.
We've bought into the charity line that these full-on formats are a necessary evil.
Maybe that's because people have bought the music in previous formats, because they see record companies as evil fat cats who don't need the money or because they just don't care.
While adhering to the usual romance format with a besieged heroine who triumphs over evil, the novel's unusual setting and turbulent era add another dimension.
With their strongly melodramatic storylines, clearly dividing a cast of colourful characters into good and evil, the novels make ideal material for adaptation to the the format of the soap opera.
Something to do, perhaps, with the format of the crime novel, a solid structure built on the implicit promise that evil, once detected, can be contained before it destroys the society that let it take root.
"So that's why you hold up a picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache in a comparison format?" "I'd compare him to someone else if I could think of someone more evil".
