The cheap melodrama of his life always had such bad scripts.

From A Noble Radiance by Donna Leon. Page 189. The protagonist Guido Brunetti and his time-serving, publicity seeking, bore of a boss Patta.

'Good, good,' Patta muttered, enough for Brunetti to infer that he was not at all interested in the Lorenzonis.

He asked nothing; long experience had shown him that Patta preferred people to worm news out of him, rather than to tell them straightforwardly. Brunetti wasn't going to help him out.

'It’s about this programme, Brunetti,' Patta finally said:

'Yes, sir? Brunetti inquired politely.

'The one RAI is doing about the police.'

Brunetti remembered something about a police programme to be produced and edited in a film studio in Padova. He'd had a letter some weeks ago, asking if he would agree to serve as consultant, or was it commentator? He'd tossed the letter into his wastepaper basket and forgotten about it. 'Yes, sir?' he repeated, no less politely.

'They want you.'

'I beg your pardon, sir.'

'You. They want you to be the consultant and to give them a long interview about how the police system works.'

Brunetti thought of the work that waited for him, thought of the Lorenzoni investigation. 'But that’ s absurd.'

'That's what I told them,' Patta agreed. 'I told them they needed someone with broader experience, someone who has a wider vision of police work, can see it as a whole, not as a series of individual cases and crimes.'

One of the things Brunetti most disliked about Patta was the fact that the cheap melodrama of his life always had such bad scripts.