“While journeying in [Graham Greene’s] footsteps, [Norman]Sherry contracted gangrene of the intestine in Panama, tropical diabetes in Liberia, and went temporarily blind after a car accident in the UK. A mugging in Liberia caused him permanent ear damage. So worried was Greene about his biographer’s capacity for catastrophe that he blocked Sherry’s proposed visit to a Congolese leper colony. Even during this stay at the sedate Savile Club, he has managed to fall down the stairs. At the end of our conversation, showing old-fashioned courtesy, he wants to escort me to Bond Street tube station. I politely decline and cross the road cautiously. As I look back, I see him stumble into a passer-by.”
From the Sunday Times via Bookslut, but originally in the Guardian.
I don’t know how far you have got with Rebus, but I had to stop reading them when Rebus’ character flaws degenerated into Rebus behaving like a tool (to put it politely) to Make Plot Happen. It could have been an interesting study of a man compelled to sabotage his life due to inner demons, but I stopped finding it convincing…