[A] writer who ridicules villainy, though the tone of most of his books is not comic but deeply serious and moving, is Leon Garfield. He involves his readers in a situation where, identified with the hero, they see the forces of evil moving to engulf them and then, suddenly, by a delicate twist of phrase, he shows not the wickedness of the villain but his weakness and, above all, his vanity. As Thackeray pointed out, once you understand a man's vanity, he is in your power; for this reason the Garfield villians evoke almost as much sympathy as terror. (p. 125)

Catherine Storr, "Things That Go Bump in the Night" (reprinted by permission of the author), in The Sunday Times Magazine, March 7, 1971 (and reprinted in The Cool Web, edited by Margaret Meek, Aidan Warlow, and Griselda Barton, The Bodley Head, 1977, pp. 120-27).