When I meet him during his trip to the UK to promote the new paperback edition of Homicide, his blunt conversational style, ordinary shirt and jeans and what seems a terribly honest sort of baldness all suggest someone whose heart remains on the metro desk of a US city newspaper.
He's a writer of a terribly playful sort of provocation, who, like all the greatest artists, is willing to let you go if you will: "But perhaps it is now you, reader, who, buffeted by all these possibilities, tired of these manoeuvres that have you stamping with impatience at the threshold of this work, have one and for all lost your desire to know more about it.
It's not terrible, just terribly televisual; the sort of film that might pass muster on a long-haul flight but proves less tempting for anyone with easy access to an exit.
Would they be monogrammed, or is that sort of thing terribly, terribly common?
In short, the law does not distinguish terribly well between real secrets and sort-of secrets, especially in an age when the instinct to stamp "classified" runs rampant.
Johnson was critical of some of the gloomy talk coming out of the Bank of England and said that the language of cuts was "not terribly useful in this sort of climate".
Johnson was critical of some of the gloomy talk coming out of the Bank of England and said the language of cuts was "not terribly useful in this sort of climate".
Johnson did not directly challenge the chancellor but was critical about the gloomy rhetoric from the Bank of England, saying the language of cuts was "not terribly useful in this sort of climate".
Another woman also described "two sides" to the patient image, contrasting a view of them looking "horrible" or else "terribly brave" with appreciation that many others just carry on with normal activities: "I think the idea is that you get cancer and you know either you end up dead or looking really horrible or you're sort of terribly brave and battle on like Kylie [Minogue, singer].
