Martin Luther was a zestful man, and at the table often spoke words that he would have revised carefully before putting into writing. Friends and acquaintances recorded many of these utterances, some of which have been greatly misunderstood. One day he flung out a sentence which may seem absurd on the surface but which will stand close examination. "The curse of a godless man," he said, "can sound more pleasant in God's ears than the hallelujah of the pious." On the surface the remark seems blasphemous; illustrate it and it becomes plausible, possible, and even certain.

A literary review in the London Times Literary Supplement complained that American writers of detective stories do not keep to the proper rules of the game. "In the traditional English story the author - unless without a sense of craftsmanship - does not have the murder done by a clergyman; he does not extract skeletons from the cupboards of those who are to live happily ever after; within the limits of the genre his characters observe the conventions of their social position to the point that where they disregard them they are marked down as suspects. But in the American story, spotting the culprit is more difficult because anybody may have done anything."