It emphasised the tension between the good exterior and the sordid truth behind materialism.

Rumor named her a killer who had gutted the rogue who tried to steal her legacy in the Black Drake; but the sordid truth was more desperate.

When Mann's inevitable agent showed up to apply the screws, Edwin apparently decided Emily was scarier than the colonel, and told her the sordid truth.

Judith is in bad shape long before she finds out the sordid truth about her husband, a successful architect of perfectionist temperament.

There comes a point when art that strives to reveal the sordid truth goes so gleefully overboard that the degradation it exposes becomes a laughable caricature.

To be specific: way back in 1991, Kelley published a book that claimed to expose the sordid truth about Nancy Reagan.

I'd never before been forced to embrace the whole sordid, twitching, visceral truth.

He told her everything-the sordid truth of what his mother had suffered, the honor of the man he'd thought his father.

The sordid truth was I expected Garth to lead me through the hospital to meet some handsome, starry-eyed young intern who he would euphemistically introduce as "my friend."

(Presumably some hyperlinked sentence such as read the sordid truth about so-and-so here would fall under that rubric).