Murder Theory (The Naturalist, #3)

by Andrew Mayne

While legal lines sharply define what can and cannot be done, our personal sense of right and wrong doesn’t necessarily hew so closely to them.

It was his way of putting Theory of Mind to practical use—understanding how others see the world. There are glasses for trying to understand minority points of view, glasses for thinking like a Neolithic caveman, a Bronze Age farmer, and so on. Each one helps us understand that our points of view are shaped by what we see, what we’ve been told, and, lastly, how we process it all.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that just because two things are on a moral gradient they’re equal. That’s irrational.

Strangely, I can see that smiling face under a Kevlar helmet in the middle of Iraq, still keeping her spirits up even as her friends are dying all around her. And when things were at the worst, when she had to bury her husband,

can still see that face carrying a kind of inexhaustible resolve that helped her through the darkest of times.

Still, I’m afraid of drifting apart from her without realizing it. Like a boat stretching its anchor line to the point that one day it snaps without warning.

bureau below the flat-screen TV on the wall only has hardcover novels. Most of them are Stephen King—not an encouraging sight.