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If Joan Didion had an overarching preoccupation as a journalist and novelist, it was to find interstices where truth and myth blend into each other.

Expect a pervasive climate of suspicion and a preoccupation with revenge.

She said his violent intentions were shown "through the use of weapons and his sexual preoccupations".

Jailing the 18-year-old for a minimum of 52 years in January, Mr Justice Goose said the material showed he had "a longstanding preoccupation with violent killing and genocide".

But Rankin also knows that language is a Canadian preoccupation.