As murder storywriters assume, and as most of us learn in experience, we have in us capacities for fury, fear, envy, greed, conceit, callousness, and hate which, given the right provocation, could make killers out of us all--baby-batterers or professional thugs or amateur hit men.

G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown explained his method of detection by saying, "You see, it was I who killed all those people"--in the sense that he looked within himself to find the mentality that would produce the crime he was investigating, and did in fact discover it there. ...

Brown, though fictitious, states fact. When the fathomless wells of rage and hatred in the normal human heart are tapped, the results are fearful. "There but for the grace of God go I." Only restraining and renewing grace enables anyone to keep the sixth commandment.