Family Life, Marketing and Bill Hicks

As a follow up to yesterday’s post on Paul Charles’ charm, I thought I’d share a line from Family Life that kind of nailed me when I read it. To put the quote in some context, a wet-behind-the-ears cop is conducting an interview with a murder victim’s brother, who happens to work in marketing. And then this:

‘There didn’t seem to be any apparent common denominator between marketing and murdering, so Casey decided to move on.’

Now, it may be cynical of me to latch on to this line as humour. After all, I’ve no basis at all with which to assume that marketing can be synonymous with murder...

Bill Hicks might disagree, though.

I don’t remember there being as much humour in the Dust of Death, the first Inspector Starrett novel, but that’s most likely due to the fact that I read it quite some time ago. Family Life deals with a very grim situation, a murder in which the victim’s siblings are the most obvious suspects, but Charles deals quite a few leavening moments along with the bleak. It’s disarming but it’s keeping me hooked.