| Polly: |
Do you like Dostoevsky? |
| Ted smiles blankly. Polly smiles and holds up ‘Crime and Punishment’. |
| Ted: |
Oh! Oh, him? Oh, yes, that’s one of my favourites, all right. I must have read that book…ten times. |
| Polly: |
I see you’re reading it again. There’s a bookmark here on page seven. |
| Ted smiles and nods. |
| Polly: |
Did you feel his sense of commitment wane towards the end? |
| Ted: |
Well, yes. |
| Polly: |
When did you feel that begin to happen? |
| Ted: |
Towards the end. |
| Pause. |
| Ted: |
Around the time he stopped writing about crime and went on to the punishment bit. It began to drag a bit there for me. |
Have you read any recent Falco? The recently-published Companion threw light on a bit of the patchiness (not least that Davis lost her long-term partner, which threw her a bit) and I think the last two or three have been much better than the ones preceding them.