Doctor Fischer of Geneva, Or, the Bomb Party...How Life Imitated Art

 Since I read Graham Greene's 'Doctor Fischer of Geneva, Or, the Bomb Party', 1980,  sometime in 1980's, the book has stayed with me because I have found more and more people behaving like either Doctor Fischer or his toadies...especially my relatives....

"...But it was not for his money that I detested Doctor Fischer. I hated him for his pride, his contempt of all the world, and his cruelty. He loved no one, not even his daughter..."

"...Anna-Luise called them 'Toads', her English not being perfect. She meant, of course, toadies, but I soon adopted the title which she had given them. Among the Toads was an alcoholic film actor called Richard Deane, a Divisionnaire ~ a very high rank in the Swiss army, which only has a general in time of war ~ called Krueger, an international lawyer named Kips, a tax adviser, Monsieur Belmont, and an American woman with blue hair called Mrs Montgomery. The General, as some of the others called him, was retired, Mrs Montgomery was satisfactorily widowed, and they all had settled around Geneva for the same reason, either to escape taxes in their own countries or take advantage of favourable cantonal conditions. Doctor Fischer and the Divisionnaire were the only Swiss nationals in the group when I came to know them and Fischer was by a long way the richest. He ruled them all as a man might rule a donkey with a whip in one hand and a carrot in the other. They were very well lined themselves, but how they enjoyed the carrots. It was only for the carrots that they put up with his abominable parties at which they were always first humiliated ('Have you no sense of humour?' I can imagine him demanding at the early dinners) and then rewarded. In the end they learnt to laugh even before the joke was sprung. They felt themselves to be a select group ~ there were plenty of people around Geneva who envied them their friendship with the great Doctor Fischer..."

  Dr. Fischer of Geneva (TV Movie 1984)