And against its own stated intentions, this book is a backhanded tribute to their influence.

Ultimately, this becomes a backhanded tribute to his comic abilities.

Mr. Beers has written a backhanded tribute to the certitudes of his childhood.

Gachet (Gérard Séty) is Mr. Pialat's backhanded tribute to his most persistent patron, the producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier.

Even antilabor violence was a sort of backhanded tribute: Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford noticed the people who worked for them, if only to shoot and club them into submission.

Peterson returned to Oakland on Tuesday night as the Mets' pitching coach and was greeted with a backhanded tribute.

Aristocratic criticism of royal rapacity was a backhanded tribute to that success.

It is not therefore surprising that there were many malicious or frivolous complaints, and the many investigations which judged complaints ungrounded are a backhanded tribute to the fairness of the system.

My only quarrel with this book is a backhanded tribute to its virtues, to the interest created in character and situation.