In “A Ladder to the Sky”, John Boyne  (The Absolutist) ponders how far a writer will go for to achieve success.  Maurice Swift, an aspiring writer, has a knack for prying stories from people and using them to fuel his own ambitions as a writer.   The problem is, “he has no imagination for fiction,” so he can only go as far as his borrowings take him.  Swift is akin to Patricia Highsmith’s Mr Ripley, minus the violence, in his amoral pursuit of the awards of writing.