AHP episodes about financial duplicity, such as DON'T COME BACK ALIVE, can be far fetched and so lack credibility. This stories' comparative simplicity makes it eminently believable. Helen's increasingly desperate entreaties - "Do you have the money?" - build the tension until the heart-rending denouement. It's virtually impossible to have sympathy for outright criminals but you can't help rooting for Helen, a decent person who does wrong for unselfish reasons. Having clocked up two hundred episodes this year (how sad is that?) I'm amazed this one is, at the time of writing, two thirds of the way down the popularity ratings. Indeed, it's one of only three that inspired me to do such an effusive review. The others, since you ask, are ARTHUR and MAIL ORDER PROPHET. To declare an interest, in my financial services career decades ago it was widely assumed that anyone claiming never to have forged ("fudged" being the euphemism) a client's signature just to save time was either a saint or being economical with the truth. Enough said.
Review of A Very Moral Theft
