Once again, Decoder Ring Theater presents another page from the casebook of that Master of Mystery,

that's Sultan of Sleuthing, Martin Bracknell's immortal detective, Black Jack Justice,

starring Christopher Mott as Jack and Andrea Lyons as Trixie Dixon Girl Detective.

The name's Dixon. Trixie Dixon, girl detective. The name's Dixon. Trixie Dixon, girl detective.

There are things in this life that just get a bad rat, my friends, and sometimes it does

not hurt us to wonder why and how that came to be, and if it isn't at least partly Jack's

fault. Take good intentions, if you will. It has been remarked by many

in the sort of wise old saws that my partner favors in his moments of narrative introspection

that the road to hell is in fact paved with them. And leaving aside for the moment the fact

that this is tremendously impractical, one can't see the point that's being made.

More often than not, people mean well.

I'm sorry if that seems dewy-eyed or innocent.

I think that we know one another well enough for you to be certain that I am neither of those.

But it's true.

The criminal class is notwithstanding very few people actively set out with an intention to do what is wrong.

More often than not, they expend considerable time and energy persuading themselves that what they really, really want to do is not, in fact, really all that wrong at all,

but is only fair, and right, and just, and everyone else can just suck it up.

And perhaps that is the source of the smears against the name of good intentions,

are ridiculously low standards for same.

But there is a certain truth to the argument that meaning well is not a defense when it all goes

horribly, horribly awry.

And that extends to detective work as well.

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