but i could n't help but notice , as soon as i began to investigate toby o'dare as a boy , anxious and burdened with countless cares , that he liked nothing better than to watch on late-night television the most brutal of detective shows , and they took his mind off the hideous realities of his own crumbling world , and the firing of bullets always produced a catharsis in him just as the producers of those shows wanted to do .