SOURCE: "Who Remembers That Fine Fellow, What's-His-Name?" in New York Herald Tribune Book Week, Vol. 2, No. 5, October 11, 1964, pp. 6, 21.

In this review of Bad Characters, Perry finds Stafford's villains enthralling but notes that a "nagging, sometimes boring, similarity surrounds her 'good' characters."

Jean Stafford, one of the finest writers publishing today, is a genius at creating "bad" characters.

Consider Persis Galt, a Boston lady living in Heidelberg just before the outbreak of the war, in her middle forties, "rich and ripe like an autumn fruit" with a "stalwart Massachusetts jaw." She is fascinating whether masquerading in tweeds or dressed in low-cut black velvet, an ebony cross on her white bosom, surrounded by sycophantic monks. In spite of the fact that she is a fanatical convert to Catholicism, she regularly violates the sixth commandment with a young Nazi officer named Max. Max is pretty bad, too, since, it turns out...