Quotes & Sayings About Detective Fiction

There was nothing ... and nothing ... and then the car bumped up again. There was a muffled pop, the sound of a small pumpkin exploding in a microwave oven.
Morris cut the wheel to the left and there was another bump as the Biscayne went back into the parking area. He looked in the mirror and saw that Curtis's head was gone. — Stephen King

I think every writer of detective fiction writing today has been influenced by Mr. Parker. I'm of a generation that followed Robert Parker, and it was impossible to read the genre and not be influenced by him. — Robert Crais

Well, George Anson Phillips is a kind of pathetic case ... He was the sort of cop who would be likely to hang a pinch on a chicken thief, if he saw the guy steal the chicken and the guy fell down running away and hit his head on a post or something and knocked himself out. Otherwise it might get a little tough and George would have to go back to the office for instructions. — Raymond Chandler

I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle. — Sergei Lukyanenko

Jack Byrne's Fiction House became known for its powerful, invincible female heroes. At a time when many publishers had none, Fiction House employed more than twenty women artists.46 The popularity of comics soared. Gaines, who did not tend to hire women to do anything except secretarial work, began publishing All-American Comics in 1939. That same year, Superman became the first comic-book character to have an entire comic book all to himself; he could also be heard on the radio.47 The first episode of Batman appeared in Detective Comics #27, in May 1939. Three months later, Byrne Holloway Marston, staff artist for the Marston Chronicle, drew the first installment of The Adventures of Bobby Doone. — Jill Lepore

Now I pass up about twenty-five or thirty thousand of honest gain because I like being a detective, like the work. And liking work makes you want to do it as well as you can. Otherwise there'd be no sense to it. That's the fix I am in. I don't know anything else, don't enjoy anything else, don't want to know or enjoy anything else. You can't weight that against any sum of money. Money's good stuff. I haven't anything against it. — Dashiell Hammett

I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them. — James Patterson

My motto? Don't trust someone who is just as cagey as yourself."
"What kind of detective are you?" "A lousy one and proud of it. I write, remember?"
She looked down at her hand & laughed. "Berretta doesn't make lighters." "Why I was a writer! My life revolved around fiction. I could make something up"
"She looked down at her hand & laughed. "Berretta doesn't make lighters."
"So they're not Tolstoy, they're a little shorter ... Okay, okay a lot. Go ahead, read my mystery series anyway."
"A detective has their boundaries especially me. So mine shifted occasionally ... okay a lot"
"Beat it, Buster. My temper and this mace have a hair trigger."
"Interference could be lethal." I got right up in his face, hissing, "Don't push me, I'm hormonal."
I'm not really a lousy detective, just rough around the edges. — Peggy A. Edelheit

All that stuff you read about detectives having microphones, guns, and other fancy gadgets in the drawers, is strictly for the cows. The only action we ever get is killing mosquitoes during an all-night watch. Our preferred choice of weapon is a spray can of mosquito repellent, and a steel flask of whisky. — Saurbh Katyal

A wise man does not always admit to everything he knows. And sometimes an overly-credulous friend can be a source of mild amusement."
~Sherlock Holmes — Stephanie Osborn

Al Hickey: It's not about anything.
Frank Boggs: Yeah, it's about four hundred grand — Phillip Rock

She and I are as far apart as the stars in the sky and the soles of my feet." Detective Sean Ryan ~Deception on Sable Hill by Shelley Gray — Shelley Gray

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. — James Crumley

That was the thing about luck, its laws were those of scarcity. — Lily Gardner

In my fiction, there's a lot that's borrowed from music. It's never like I'm taking a lyric, but more the mood of a particular song. 'The Boy Detective Fails' was like listening to 'Eleanor Rigby' by The Beatles, this very melancholy-but-poppy song. — Joe Meno

I am the prosecutor. I represent the state. I am here to present to you the evidence of a crime. Together you will weigh this evidence. You will deliberate upon it. You will decide if it proves the defendant's guilt. — Scott Turow

When a man writes on a wall, his instinct leads him to write above the level of his own eyes. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Forgive me if I am not filled with enthusiasm for the new golden age," he said. — Alex Lamb

About Tommy, you went through your whole life craving these little pockets of time and missing them for more time than you had them. — Lily Gardner

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. — Arthur C. Clarke

Now take it easy. This is a gun I have at your back. Don't you feel it?"
I felt it. I took it easy. — Ross Macdonald

The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective.
(Letter, April 19, 1951) — Raymond Chandler

I definitely have an affection for detective fiction, and when I first read Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon,' that book and its author made an enormous impression on me as a reader and a writer, and led me to other hard-boiled American writers like Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald, among many. — Avi

When you don't know what to believe, when you're not prepared to play the amateur detective, then you get tired and dismiss the entire business, you let it go, you stop thinking and wash your hands of the truth or of the whole tangled mess - which comes to the same thing. The truth is never clear, it's always a tangled mess. Even when you get to the bottom of it. But in real life almost no one needs to find the truth or devote himself to investigating anything, that only happens in puerile novels. — Javier Marias

There were men in their fifties, men who take a stab at fitness, men who try. They may not look young, but they still look viable. Lammers wasn't one of those. Lammers was one of those crack-in-the-ass guys ten months pregnant with a beer baby. — Lily Gardner

[ ... ] a super-rat. I nailed it across the eyes once with a lucky shot with the butt of my gun, but it got up again and shat in my telephone. — Warren Ellis

Flowers are fragile and ephemeral ... Even if you meant to protect them with a surrounding fence from wind and rain, they would die without sunlight ... and a spindly fence has no power against a strong wind. - Haibara Ai — Gosho Aoyama

If everything comes in your way just the way you wanted them to ,then you're probably in the wrong lane. — ARKOPAUL

Faith doesn't move mountains, Detective. It just obscures the view. — Corey Redekop

I am occasionally desired by congenital imbeciles and the editors of magazines to say something about the writing of detective fiction "from the woman's point of view." To such demands, one can only say "Go away and don't be silly. You might as well ask what is the female angle on an equilateral triangle. — Dorothy L. Sayers

When I think of highly plotted novels I think of detective fiction or mystery fiction, the kind of work that always produces a few dead bodies. But these bodies are basically plot points, not worked-out characters. The book's plot either moves inexorably toward a dead body of flows directly from it, and the more artificial the situation the better. Readers can play off their fears by encountering the death experience in a superficial way. A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot, makes it less fearful by containing it in a kind of game format. [from an interview with DeCurtis] — Don DeLillo

This was hopeless. In a novel, Adrian wouldn't just have accepted things as they were put to him. What was the point of having a situation worthy of fiction if the protagonist didn't behave as he would have done in a book? Adrian should have gone snooping, or saved up his pocket money and employed a private detective; perhaps all four of us should have gone off on a Quest to Discover the Truth. Or would that have been less like literature and too much like a kids' story? — Julian Barnes

All the clues are there in front of us,hidden under a veil,we cannot get the clue by searching for,we have to search for the veil instead. — Arkopaul Das

A detective who uses his deductive powers to corner a suspect and then does nothing to stop them from committing suicide is no better than a murderer himself. - Kudo Shinichi — Gosho Aoyama

If you look at the best-seller list for American fiction, they're all sequels to detective stories or stories about hunting serial killers. That's what's called American fiction these days. — Albert Brooks

It was always the same for her when she arrived to meet the body. After she unbuckled her seat belt, after she pulled a stick pen from the rubber band on the sun visor, after her long fingers brushed her hip to feel the comfort of her service piece, what she always did was pause. Not long. Just the length of a slow deep breath. That's all it took for her to remember the one thing she will never forget. Another body waited. She drew the breath. And when she could feel the raw edges of the hole that had been blown in her life, Detective Nikki Heat was ready. She opened the car door and went to work ... Heat could have made it easier on herself by parking closer, but this was another of her rituals: the walk up. Every crime scene was a flavor of chaos, and these two hundred feet afforded the detective her only chance to fill the clean slate with her own impressions. — Richard Castle

Florence Dempsey, played by Torchy Blane actress Glenda Farrell, goes so far as to memorably declare to her friend Charlotte in The Mystery of the Wax Museum, "You raise the kids; I'll raise the roof! — Erika Janik

Rebus drank his coffee and felt his head spin. He was feeling like the detective in a cheap thriller, and wished that he could turn to the last page and stop all his confusion, all the death and the madness and the spinning in his ears. — Ian Rankin

Al Hickey: [following the final shootout] Nobody came ... nobody cares. It's still not about anything.
Frank Boggs: Yeah, you told me. — Phillip Rock

Injustice, large and small, was like sour, moldy bread. Consumed often enough, it brought on hunger for the meat of revenge. — B.V. Lawson

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, short story writer, playwright, editor, critic, essayist and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of the macabre and mystery, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. He is also credited with contributing to the emergent science fiction genre.Poe died at the age of 40. The cause of his death is undetermined and has been attributed to alcohol, drugs, cholera, rabies, suicide (although likely to be mistaken with his suicide attempt in the previous year), tuberculosis, heart disease, brain congestion and other agents. Source: Wikipedia — Edgar Allan Poe

A diamond wedding ring, you say?"
I studied his face. Was he putting me on? He looked earnest. "As any guy would expect, a diamond is what she's after," I said. "Did you hold out hope you'd get by for anything less? — Ed Lynskey

Digital Age Cozy: Cozy mystery can be more than knitting grannies, cats, and cookbooks! — A.E.H. Veenman

A smile is hidden beneath the mustache, it crinkles the corners of his hooded eyes. "I didn't. I have other business in town and I told my friend I would attend to the matter of his son, as he could not do so himself."
"Very kind of you."
"Yes. I have been looking forward to it for quite some time."
Daddy's lemonade is almost gone, he sips it carefully, turning his eyes back to the water. "Looking forward to seeing the lad or to conducting your business?" Daddy is toying with him.
"Both. You see, I had never actually met his son." The glass rests against Daddy's lips, unmoving. Mr. Geyer watches him closely. "But now I have, so I can get on with my," he fixes his own gaze on the water, as though trying to see whatever it is that has transfixed my father, "business. — Gwenn Wright

Get a load of this, Frank." Gerald Peyton's pause set off his pronouncement. "She is expecting to get a wedding ring."
"That's understandable," I said, unsure how he could afford a ring on what our firm cleared. Diamond rings - more sold in December than in any other month of the year - went for a cool grand per karat. Weeks ago, I'd priced them - again - for my domestic situation. "What seems to be the problem?"
"That's a big leap for me to make."
"I expect you'll make it with room to spare. — Ed Lynskey

That's our cue," Dr. Chadwick noted, managing to approximate a cheerful smile, addressing the room at large. "Everyone please stand behind the yellow line until the doors open. No food, drink, flash photography, or video cameras are permitted. Once aboard the ride, please keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times until we come to a full and complete stop. Otherwise, they're apt to end up in another universe somewhere without ya, and wouldn't that fry your noggin? — Stephanie Osborn

He smiled again. I kept staring. Then I said, "My name is Tillary Quilter."
"You called. We have an appointment. I'm a trained investigator, so I figured that one out. — Shelly Reuben

Sometimes a girl's gotta be bad to be good.

Murder in the Dog Park — Jill Yesko

It's no secret - I love detective fiction. One of the reasons I love being in London is because I like to watch all the shows on TV. I watch them all. I like 'Detective Frost.' — Patti Smith

I stood there alone in the eerily silent streets of Las Vegas and listened to my penis cry. — Warren Ellis

Suddenly the images in the center of the room became more than images. They solidified. — Stephanie Osborn

My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise. — Sue Grafton

My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky. — Alan Moore

Murder, other than in the most strict forensic sense, is never soluble. That dark human clot can never melt into a lucid, clear suspension. Our detective fiction tells us otherwise: everything is just meat and cold ballistics. Provide a murderer, a motive and a means, and you have solved the crime. Using this method, the solution to the Second World War is as follows: Hitler. The German economy. Tanks. Thus, for convenience, we reduce the complex events. — Alan Moore

I've always said women are vicious creatures - Detective Zach Grimes — Lauren Bradshaw

Our relationship with literary characters, at least to those that exercise a certain attraction over us, rests in fact on a denial. We know perfectly well, on a conscious level, that these characters "do not exist," or in any case do not exist in the same way as do the inhabitants of the real world. But things manifest in an entirely different way on the unconscious level, which is interested not in the ontological differences between worlds but in the effect they produce on the psyche.
Every psychoanalyst knows how deeply a subject can be influenced, and even shaped, sometimes to the point of tragedy, by a fictional character and the sense of identification it gives rise to. This remark must first of all be understood as a reminder that we ourselves are usually fictional characters for other people [ ... ] — Pierre Bayard

Humanity thrown together in the equivalent of a Petri dish under a microscope bred malignant organisms as often as benign. — B.V. Lawson

Even if you don't like Poe - he invented the detective story. And science fiction. In essence, he invented a huge part of the twentieth century. — Donna Tartt

I hate unbreakable alibis--they are usually the first to crack.
--Hugo Anstead — Jennifer A. Girardin

People responded to body language without even thinking. It was important to get it absolutely right. — Sara Sheridan

That's just where I must part company with you, Inspector," said the Vicar with a gentle smile. "I'm rather a voracious reader of mystery stories, and it's always struck me that the detective in fiction is inclined to underrate the value of intuition. — John Bude

My ears become my conduit to the world. In the darkness I listen - to thrillers, to detective novels, to romances; to family sagas, potboilers and historical novels; to ghost stories and classic fiction and chick lit; to bonkbusters and history books. I listen to good books and bad books, great books and terrible books; I do not discriminate. Steadily, hour after hour, in the darkness I consume them all. — Anna Lyndsey

It's rare for me to read any fiction. I almost only read nonfiction. I don't believe in guilty pleasures, I only believe in pleasures. People who call reading detective fiction or eating dessert a guilty pleasure make me want to puke. — Ira Glass

Calvino remembered he had no food in the house and would have to go shopping on Sukhumvit Road. Then he planned to crawl into his bed and sleep, the kind of deep sleep without dreams or hopes, a sleep without regrets, without knowing or thinking how things got the way they are or how occasional fragments of decency escaped the forces of gravity. — Christopher G. Moore

In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet."

(The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, Harper's Magazine, May 1948) — W. H. Auden

Quote taken from Chapter 1:
That's the idea. Listen, Frank, this one is different. She's a keeper." He let that part gel in me. "Get your head screwed on straight and move to Richmond. You hate it living in Pelham. — Ed Lynskey

Ochoa pulled the door and held it open for her. Nikki pivoted around the jamb, squaring her aim up the hall. She stopped, still holding her combat stance, shook her head, and mumbled, "Mother ... "
... Rook was standing halfway up the hall with Paxton snugged behind him holding the gun to his head. He looked at Nikki sheepishly and said, "So, I'm gonna guess it's Noah. — Richard Castle

Just the night before, a puma's howl had set a chill at my spine and, man, life didn't get any richer than that. — Ed Lynskey

If you don't like the path your life has taken, choose another. — Robert G. DeMers

He never had been good at arguing with women; they tapped into pools of resentment over slights that had steeped for years. — Martin Cruz Smith

Walking out into the night with a water fey was all kinds of stupid. Heck, Kelpies eat people. They may not play with their food as creatively as the Each Uisge, but dead is dead. — E.J. Stevens

Now that we can buy anything we want we seem to read detective stories. — Elizabeth Savage

You're not leaving. I told you that." She worked to keep the calm in her tone to counter his fury.
"I'm going to shoot."
"It's time to put your gun down, Noah."
"His blood will be on you."
Rook made eye contact with her and mouthed, Shoot. Him.
She had no shot and said so with the smallest head shake. — Richard Castle

Listen to me you piece of shit, if you ever give the press information about me, my parents or even breathe a word about me to anyone ever again, I swear to god I will make it my mission to make your life a living hell. And, believe me I'll do it with a smile on my face the whole time. You're a worthless excuse for a Detective and everyone here knows it. You've screwed your way to the top and backstabbed Gena to get into your Captain's good books. Well look around you honey, you're a real star. No one stopped Gena or me taking you on. I've currently got you in a hold, where I could snap your neck if I wanted to, and not one person is stepping forward to help you. Yeah, you've really made it. - Stephanie Carovella to Sandra Barton — Nina D'Angelo

It's a powerful moment, when you discover a vocabulary exists for something you'd thought incommunicably unique. Personally, I felt it reading Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim." I have friends who've found themselves described in everything from science fiction to detective novels. This self-recognition through others is not simply a by-product of art - it's the whole point. — Phil Klay

A three-pint problem — Melvyn Small

Allow me to introduce myself,
the name is Brown, Jane Brown,
and I am the greatest detective the world
has ever seen. I'm known to solve multiple cases,
on any given day, without even breaking a sweat.
In fact, I am working on one now. — A.J. DeJong

Al ... You ever kill anybody? In the United States? Because I know you mean it and everything, but I know these guys better than I know you. They're soldiers, that's all. No questions, no time to ask, no talk. Cops are worse, and less predictable. When you pull a gun, you've gotta be ready to kill somebody, and I'm telling you it's better to run. — Phillip Rock

The Land of Civilian was a dry bitter place where you sat in your car staring at drawn curtains and closed doors for hours on end, and where everything was a big, freaking secret. — Lily Gardner

Many reviews are useless because, while purporting to condemn the book, they only reveal the reviewer's dislike of the kind to which it belongs. Let bad tragedies be censured by those who love tragedy, and bad detective stories by those who love the detective story. Then we shall learn their real faults. Otherwise we shall find epics blamed for not being novels, farces for not being high comedies, novels by James for lacking the swift action of Smollett. Who wants to hear a particular claret abused by a fanatical teetotaller, or a particular woman by a confirmed misogynist? — C.S. Lewis

His most characteristic detective stories end with the realization that no rational account of events is possible, and his suspense stories tend to close with terror not dissipated but omnipresent, like God.
("Introduction") — Francis M. Nevins Jr.

Anything that has to do with noir and space, I'm gonna love. When you've got a noir-ish, pulpy detective in a science fiction show, I'm all in, in that regard. — Thomas Jane

I let my gaze travel out the picture window. Unlike at my old doublewide trailer perched on the fringe of a played out quarry, here I owned a real yard with real grass that screamed for mowing each Monday a.m. I sat at the kitchen table, cooling off from just having finished this week's job. Yes, here in 2005, I was a full-fledged suburbanite, but I'd been called worse. — Ed Lynskey

At the small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction - it fascinated rather than repelled. — Agatha Christie

Marshall Jevons is the pioneer for integrating economics and detective fiction, and The Mystery of the Invisible Hand is another fine effort in this genre. — Tyler Cowen

It's a dreadfully long monster of a book, and I certainly won't have time to read it, but I'm giving it a thorough skimming. The authors are utterly incompetent - no sense of style or structure at all. It starts out as a detective story, switches to science-fiction, then goes off into the supernatural, and is full of the most detailed information of dozens of ghastly boring subjects. And the time sequence is all out of order in a very pretentious imitation of Faulkner and Joyce. Worst yet, it has the most raunchy sex scenes, thrown in just to make it sell, I'm sure, and the authors - whom I've never heard of - have the supreme bad taste to introduce real political figures into this mishmash and pretend to be exposing a real conspiracy. You can be sure I won't waste time reading such rubbish. — Robert Shea

Watson fully comprehended the fact that occasionally it is useful for one's adversaries to underestimate one's abilities."
~Sherlock Holmes — Stephanie Osborn

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down. — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

I couldn't stop staring.
"Sweetheart," he said, "is my slip showing or something? — Shelly Reuben

We all have something special in us, it's a matter of finding it, and knowing what to do with it. — Robert Magarian

Man lives such a dull and drab life that he wants some sensation. Those who are a little wiser, they read scientific fiction or detective stories. Those who are not so wise, they read spiritual fiction. — Osho

I'm trying to figure the rules. This isn't yin and yang, it's more like yin and yank. The past few days I've been going, OK, she doesn't mix the ... romance so well with the single-mindedness of the police work. So it gets me wondering, Is the solution for me to give up our working relationship? Stop my magazine research so we can-?"
Nikki grabbed him into a deep kiss. Then she pulled away and said, "Will you shut up? — Richard Castle

When you live outside the law, you have to be flexible — Tom Cook

Your blood reveal your most intimate secrets. Are you dying of leukimia or AIDS? Did you smoke cigarette or drink a glass of wine in the last few hours? Are you prozac because you're depressed, or Viagra because you can't get it up? — Tess Gerritsen

In a single lifetime, roughly from 1865 to 1930, one finds the pioneering and patterning works of modern fantasy, science fiction, children's literature and detective fiction, of modern adventure, mystery and romance. — Michael Dirda

A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins. — Raymond Chandler

Dreema and you disagree. She cottons to Richmond, but you can't be weaned off Pelham. So I offer you a fair middle ground: relocate to northern Virginia. She transfers to the state morgue on Braddock Road, and you get to stay near your old beat. — Ed Lynskey

Well, it is generally considered - though not always true - that the wife of a man so honoured is likely also to be worthy of the honour, and so it is accorded her. In the event it is false, and I have known that to be so in more than one circumstance , it is still accorded her in deference to her husband."
~Sherlock Holmes, with respect to aristocratic titles — Stephanie Osborn

The detective story, as created by Poe, is something as specialised and as intellectual as a chess problem, whereas the best English detective fiction has relied less on the beauty of the mathematical problem and much more on the intangible human element. [ ... ] In The Moonstone the mystery is finally solved, not altogether by human ingenuity, but largely by accident. Since Collins, the best heroes of English detective fiction have been, like Sergeant Cuff, fallible. — T. S. Eliot