This is by far the best review of the show yet written.

There's a fascinating section in Rodric Braithwaite's excellent AFGHANTSY about Russian soldiers who converted to Islam in mujahedin captivity, and the psychological strength it gave many of them. There's also a 2005 or so movie about the phenomenon.

The character is based, I suspect, at least in part on one of the two female CIA agents described in THE TRIPLE AGENT, who really did suffer such guilt over her failure to spot the 9/11 attacks.

Also, Phil should post caustic follow-ups whenever Todd gets sentimental about a TV program.  Which would probably be a full-time job in and off itself - I picture the VanDerWerff household being flooded with tears every time Friends reruns are on -  but would be a great double act.

I will only trust this show to be any good when he bangs his ex-wife's spectre. And we're not talking soft-focus "Ghost" style here. I want to see ectoplasm in orifices ectoplasm has no place in being.

Oh, Mike Tyson, you loveable violent rapist, you.

(Technically, the IRA killed one American, in the Harrods bomb blasts. But I'm sure they felt very bad about it afterward.)

As a former IRA operative, of course Fiona would feel guilty about blowing up innocent people in *Miami.*  The IRA, after all, never murdered any American civilians.  (Nor did it kidnap and torture any American soldiers.)

"Upper-class suspect sneers at honest middle-class detective" is a trope of British crime fiction going back an awfully long way.  (Originally, of course, it was "Upper-class sleuth sneers at honest but dumb middle-class detective.")  The attitudes involved are really more suited to the 1930s; it's a literary hangover…