Crime Fiction Quotes

He said when the Lord made people He made them all the same for starters. But life marks people. If you know the way, you can read them like maps.

No sun cream or condoms, just in case you’re looking at the lady-boys. There’s plenty of AIDS lingering about and every STD you can imagine.

I ought to warn you, dear, he can get rather wild when he’s hungry

The laws governed people’s happiness. To be lawless was to be happy.

There was a ringing in his ears, like a dead phone line that he couldn’t hang up on.

Crime isn't pretty, only fashionably dressed.

God, I swear I’ve never seen a more nervous bunch of people. Like a bunch of rats in a science lab.

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?

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.

For every criminal mastermind, there were ten cretins: the cruel algebra of intelligence applied across the masses.

Her immediate impulse was one of self-preservation. She was tied up in this somehow, she didn’t know why or how, but there was something waiting for her on the other side of this crowd.

Rage and despair shook her for minutes or hours. She was unaware of the passage of time. Finally spent, she retreated inward and collapsed onto the floor in a fetal position, the letter in shreds around her. The room had grown dark. Like a gentle snowfall, the cold mantle of an unbearable silence descended.

Distance and time and a whitewashed mind hadn’t kept a child from growing, from existing, from demanding a place on this earth.

The battle rages everyday. In the Arena of God

How dare she not give in to his "vulnerability." There was only so much rejection he could take.

Finia glanced towards her bedroom, wishing the darkness would swallow her whole.

This wasn't the last of it. Now that Finia was carrying his baby, they would be together forever, whether she liked it or not.

We pay people and reward them for greed and sleaze . When a sex tape gets made a star is born with a publicity agent on speed dial a six figure pay cheque and a tacky lingerie line....selling filth so you can get your face on Time magazine... From Jukebox

Kara knew je only recognised t and a on a string and he was nothing more than a sleazy pupeeter

Because I want to have sex with him--and because that's sinful--I'm blushing and flushing furiously under his scrutinizing scrutiny.

Drug addicts had their drugs. Alcoholics had their bottles. Serial killers had their murders.

Her aunt and uncle worked fifteen hours a day in their desperate attempt to keep the corner shop in profit, and their Sundays were marked by exhaustion. The moral code by which they lived was that of cleanliness, respectability and prudence. Religion was for those who had the time for it, a middle-class indulgence.

Reaching for the basket of sex accoutrements, she took a thin, red tube, squeezed some clear gel onto her fingertips and returned to fondle his balls. “What’s that?” he asked, feeling a warm, tingling sensation around his genitals.“You not try before?” She smiled saucily.He shook his head.“…Special for you.

Sometimes death is even better than to confess a secret.

I’ve sometimes regretted the women I’ve been.There have been so many: daughter, sister, cop, tough broad, several kinds of whore, jilted lover, ideal wife, heroine, killer.I’ll provide the truth of them all, inasmuch as I’m capable of telling the truth.Keeping secrets, telling lies, they require the same skill. Both become a habit, almost an addiction, that’s hard to break even with the people closest to you, out of the business.They say never trust a woman who tells you her age; if she can’t keep that secret, she can’t keep yours.I’m fifty-nine.

Becky Masterman

That's the thing about digging holes,” Quinn said. “There are no assurances you'll find what you want—or want what you find.

Tami Hoag

Angel you may have lucked out this time, but just remember I’m going to be on your ass until I get my revenge. I promise you this will not be the last time you will see me! You’re a dead man Medina, maybe not now but soon! - Orlando to Angel under the crumbling furnace in the hotel.

Angel Ramon Medina

Today, women have as much of a place as protagonists and antagonist as men.

JP Wolfe

She knew with chilling and absolute certainty she was next.

I don't want you to say anything. I want you to listen. You know, being confident isn't the same as being right.

My inner goddess confirms that staring at a beautiful/rich/powerful face is the basis of True Love.

False assurances were certainly more harmful than none at all.

Chris Womersley

In the half-century of his life, a tick on the Doomsday clock, he had borne witness to the most unbelievable technological advances. He had started off listening to an old Bush radio in the corner of the living room and now he had a phone in his hand on which he could pretend to throw a scrunched-up piece of paper into a waste bin. The world had waited a long time for that.

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.

His voice as smooth as silk, Grant started into his standard crowd-pleaser: Sinatra’s 'My Kind of Town.

Never patronize your readers. That means don't talk down to them.

Tom Greer

Whose Daddy's Little Girl Now?

Lauren Bradshaw

A pawn only needs to move five spaces to become the queen" - from Bhendi Bazaar

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.

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.

To catch the bad guys, you've got to think like a bad guy - and that's why all the best detectives have a dark side...

David Videcette

Listen, we got two stiffs and a river of red in a villa in Herne Bay...

Rhys Chamberlain

Practically every fella that breaks the law has a danged good reason, to his own way of thinking, which makes every case exceptional, not just one or two. Take you, for example.

I looked at her, with her hair spilled out on the pillows and the warmth of her body warming mine. And I thought, god-dang, if this ain't a heck of a way to be in bed with a pretty woman. The two of you arguing about murder, and threatening each other, when you're supposed to be in love and you could be doing something pretty nice. And then I thought, well, maybe it ain't so strange after all. Maybe it's like this with most people, everyone doing pretty much the same thing except in a different way. And all the time they're holding heaven in their hands.

As I left his office he continued his telephone conversation, and as Amanda had declared, she was in fact waiting for me. t“So, Amanda, what is it now? Who is it you want to fix me up with today?”t“Well actually, I don’t have any new candidates in my mind just yet. I actually need some decorating advice. I want to tackle my living room den. It has been about three years since it has had a lift. It needs a new theme, and I would like your opinion of what direction I should consider . . . modern contemporary or vintage?”t“Well, what does your husband think, or does he have a vote?”t“Well, on paper, yes, but between us women . . . absolutely not.

Hazel Cartwright

Sometimes a girl's gotta be bad to be good.Murder in the Dog Park

For one… If you shoot me and your boss realizes it was without good reason, you’ll have fucked up your trial period. And trust me; I know you’re still in it.” Ian pulled open a drawer in a small brown cabinet.“Secondly, it could end very badly for me and I’d rather prevent that. Getting shot is not on my list of things to do today.” He wrapped his hand around the steel grip of his own weapon and removed it from the drawer.“And last but not least, if you plan to shoot me… Well, it’ll be a matter of which of us is quicker and has better aim.” A pleasant smile crossed his features and he casually waved the gun from side to side. “Do you want to risk it?

Natasha McNeely

I go where I want to go, I do what I want to do, and I am beholden to no one.

Mark M. DeRobertis

My philosophy in life is to eat, drink and investigate - in that order.

Mel Healy

I needed to know, Jesse. I needed to get inside his head. To find this son of a bitch, I need to get inside his head.” - Stephanie Carovella

Either I’ve got a wart on my nose they find curious, or I’ve grown a tail, Albie Merani muttered to himself. Just then he thought. I’d better get a move on, got work to do. He hurried across to some stairs, heading down deeper into station, then followed the signs to the pod station.

Surprised huh, thought you had me back in prison didn’t you? To answer your question what keeps me alive is my drive, my drive to kill you! I have nothing, but hate for you and your family. It will be my pleasure taking you out. I don’t care about power, plutonium or even being rich. None of that matters to me. I only care about taking you out. Even if I die I want to be the one who is called the killer of Angel Medina! There’s no where for you to go. Now we will truly see who is better! Come on put up you hands and prepare for your final battle of your life! - Orlando from Framed: The Second Book of the Thousand Years War

Angel Ramon Medina

It’s getting a little chilly in here! Why don’t we sit by the fireplace and I’ll tell you the story of how I single handedly killed the Medina boys!

Angel Ramon Medina

They say it's always darkest before the dawn and it was pitch black by the time I arrived at the Marriott. However I still had a few bullets left for my deadbeat uncle that tried to stab me in the back.

Angel Ramon Medina

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

Lauren Bradshaw

Regress towards progress - Dr Wannamaker

Lauren Bradshaw

The whole thing becomes like this evil enchantment from a fairy tale, but you're made to believe the spell can never be broken.

The viewpoint character in each story is usually someone trapped in a living nightmare, but this doesn't guarantee that we and the protagonist are at one. In fact Woolrich often makes us pull away from the person at the center of the storm, splitting our reaction in two, stripping his protagonist of moral authority, denying us the luxury of unequivocal identification, drawing characters so psychologically warped and sometimes so despicable that a part of us wants to see them suffer. Woolrich also denies us the luxury of total disidentification with all sorts of sociopaths, especially those who wear badges. His Noir Cop tales are crammed with acts of police sadism, casually committed or at least endorsed by the detective protagonist. These monstrosities are explicitly condemned almost never and the moral outrage we feel has no internal support in the stories except the objective horror of what is shown, so that one might almost believe that a part of Woolrich wants us to enjoy the spectacles. If so, it's yet another instance of how his most powerful novels and stories are divided against themselves so as to evoke in us a divided response that mirrors his own self-division.("Introduction")

Francis M. Nevins Jr.

I wake and in those first fuddled moments forget you’re not here. I must have been dreaming about you – a tense, erotic dream. I reach out in bed to the place your body should be. It’s cold and there is no hollow. Even the bed is forgetting you.

The old joke is that psychiatrists are doctors who can't stand the sight of blood. Maybe they can't stand it, but if they work where I work, they damn well better get used to it.At least surgeons and prizefighters get to wear gloves

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