Best 145 quotes in «detective quotes» category

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

And then he had trained them, those lupine eyes, on her. The hunger in them so startled her that she took a step backward, striking her head against an iron pillar with such force that she later found crumbs of dried blood in her hair. It was a purely impersonal hunger, if such a thing there was - and here her report to Mr. Panicker faltered under the burden of his disapproval for her "romantic nature" - a hunger devoid of prurience, appetite, malice, or goodwill. It was a hunger, she decided later, for information. And yet there was liveliness in his gaze, a kind of cool vitality that was nearly amusement, as if a steady lifelong diet of mundane observations had preserved the youthful-ness of his optic organs alone.

A black telephone receiver was stuffed in the small space between his ear and his shoulder; he motioned for them to sit in the stiff wooden armchairs in front of his desk. Moments later he hung up the phone, the base ringing lightly from the impact. “So you’re still in a mess, aren’t you?” he said.

A Dick and Jane story written in blood and battered bone. See Spot. See Spot run. See Spot run from a gaping chest wound. Run Spot run. See Detective smear Spot into a baggy for DNA testing.

All people, whether Aspie or neuro-typical are predisposed by their society to make guesses, jump to conclusions and then seek to defend those conclusions, regardless of logic or changing circumstance. This is sloppy, illogical thinking which may not hinder your life too much, under normal circumstances. But if you want to be a great detective, then such thinking will absolutely ruin your chances.

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.

As the greatest of detectives makes the greatest of criminals, a specialist in investigation is also a specialist in murder.

Becoming a fae leader? Not on my bucket list.

Before you work with me you must know that I am an atheist and I believe in neither supreme powers of any God or the trickery of the Devil, I am student of the criminal psychology and believe that behind every murder there is psychopath at work with some insidious agenda at play and motive unknown to human mind.

All that Anne Rice crap is true, I thought on my way out the door; New Orleans really does have a vampire problem. Besides me, of course.

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.

. . . and there was for a moment an unbreakable bond between us: the eternal bond of chemistry. I glowed with all the fire of a newborn galaxy.

Believe no-one, doubt everything and remember, everyone lies". ~Prof. Nick Fennimore

Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers.

Blackstone's Police Operational Handbook recommends the ABC of serious investigation: Assume nothing, Believe nothing, and Check everything.

Blood always excites me.

But he couldn't feel self-pity in the face of the memorial. He hadn't lost nearly enough as these children, who'd lost their homeland and, in many cases,their whole families. Perhaps they had gained something, too, though. They had at least escaped the concentration camps, been taken in by good, caring families, and had grown up to live their lives in relative freedom.

But if I want to murder somebody, will it really be the best plan to make sure I'm alone with him?' Lord Pooley's eyes recovered their frosty twinkle as he looked at the little clergyman. He only said: 'If you want to murder somebody, I should advise it.

Chatty, defensive, observant. My new favorite witness.

Coaching was hard. Being a detective is murder.

Conan Doyle deluded a century of readers into thinking we're all deductive geniuses.

Covert operations relied on the unguarded slip, the unconscious choosing of one word over another.

Dana was what Steve called a "silent partner" in the Brixton Brothers Detective Agency. Being a silent partner meant that Dana didn't carry a business card, that his name didn't appear on the company letterhead, and he wanted nothing to do with the Brixton Brothers Detective Agency.

Despite a protective Geyer threatening to “break the neck of the first reporter who attempted to interview the woman,” a determined reporter caught Mrs. Pitezel on her way out of the Rossin House dining room.

Don't follow someone into the dark, Stevie. I've seen it happen too many times.

Don't wanna ever take your shoes off in coconut land. Never know when you're gonna have to run.

Everyone deserv a chance maybe 2 or 3, but always this guy wants something and before he didn't made it don't mean that now again won't reach a conclusion.

—Então o senhor tem uma teoria? —Um detetive, M. Martin, sempre tem uma teoria. É o que se espera dele. Pessoalmente, não chamo de teoria. Digo que é uma ideiazinha. Essa é a primeira fase. —E a segunda? —Se a ideiazinha for acertada, então eu sei! É bastante simples, como se vê. —Gostaria que me dissesse qual é a sua teoria... ou ideiazinha.

Ever since we’d found Wilson, his cousin’s calmness bothered me. I realized now I felt less unease with angry outbursts from grieving relatives, than I had with the slow, ticking time bomb of the quiet and collected. --Prepped for Kill, Marjorie Gardens Mystery Book 2

Every time I got married I was told it was time to settle down, and every time I got divorced I was told it was time to settle up. My accountant says I can't afford to settle down anymore." - Carl Engel (A farewell to Paradise)

Follow my lead, Miss Rook," Jackaby said, rapping on the ornately trimmed door to 1206 Campbell Street. Were my employer a standard private investigator, those might have been simple instructions, but in the time I've been his assistant, I've found very little about Jackaby to be standard. Following his lead tends to call for a somewhat flexible relationship with reality.

Frankly, I wish I could make my heart quit doing an extra thump when Wolfe says satisfactory, Archie. It's childish.

From the start he'd sworn to himself that the job would never make him callous. But here he was, annoyed at someone for having the gall to get murdered when he had other plans.

Have you checked your ass out lately? It’s pretty dang distracting, darling.” ~ Gunner Wilson

Everything can be summed up into an equation.

He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back it was to BLACK MASK and the other detective magazines with a curious and terrible fiction which had never been seen before in the genre markets; Hart Crane and certainly Hemingway were writing of people on the edge of their emotions and their possibility but the genre mystery markets were filled with characters whose pain was circumstantial, whose resolution was through action; Woolrich's gallery was of those so damaged that their lives could only be seen as vast anticlimax to central and terrible events which had occurred long before the incidents of the story. Hammett and his great disciple, Chandler, had verged toward this more than a little, there is no minimizing the depth of their contribution to the mystery and to literature but Hammett and Chandler were still working within the devices of their category: detectives confronted problems and solved (or more commonly failed to solve) them, evil was generalized but had at least specific manifestations: Woolrich went far out on the edge. His characters killed, were killed, witnessed murder, attempted to solve it but the events were peripheral to the central circumstances. What I am trying to say, perhaps, is that Hammett and Chandler wrote of death but the novels and short stories of Woolrich *were* death. In all of its delicacy and grace, its fragile beauty as well as its finality. Most of his plots made no objective sense. Woolrich was writing at the cutting edge of his time. Twenty years later his vision would attract a Truffaut whose own influences had been the philosophy of Sartre, the French nouvelle vague, the central conception that nothing really mattered. At all. But the suffering. Ah, that mattered; that mattered quite a bit.

He had called what he felt for Charlotte love and it remained the most profound feeling he had had for any woman. In the pain it had caused him and its lasting after-effects it had more resembled a virus that, even now, he was not He had called what he felt for Charlotte love and it remained the most profound feeling he had had for any woman. In the pain it had caused him and its lasting after-effects it had more resembled a virus that, even now, he was not.

He paused just long enough for me to know I was starting to bug him. I bug a lot of people, they usually do just what Sully did, make a show of putting down the important thing they were doing to go and do the unimportant thing I just asked, solely in the interest of getting rid of me. Sometimes I think the bulk of my societal interaction is annoying people. I wonder what that's doing to my psyche.

He resolved for Detective Geyer to undertake a careful and methodical search for the blunder which a criminal always makes between the inceptions and consummation of his crime.

His thoughts were wheeling and dipping like the gulls over the estuary, groping for an explanation, feeling at last he was making sense of what lie behind Walden's death...

I am a biological detective.

I can’t believe it.’ I whispered. ‘You can’t let him lure you back in, Felicia. He’s wrong. He’s wrong!’ Vanian pleaded, I could feel the quiver of his magic, the wisps that were fighting against the iron burning into his wrists, I could feel the crackle as it fought in the air, against his emotions, against his pain. I shook my head, was about to speak but Adam grabbed him by the front of his shirt; as if a few more tears and shreds couldn’t go amiss. The tightness of his grip paled the Faerie’s cheeks, caused the blood to trickle down faster, dropping to the floor. ‘My wife.’ He yelled, ‘She’s my wife, silverblood.’ With each growl of a syllable he accented it with a punch to Vanian’s face. I couldn’t take much more. I jumped over and pulled at Adam’s shoulders, fingertips driving into the nook of his collarbone, pressing down with as much as I had in me, anything to break his hold. He recoiled and rose his hand to me, at first I flinched but I stopped. He wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t.

I could tell he was becoming sulky, as boys and men do when they're caught bluffing. And I ignored him, as girls and women do when they catch them out.

I didn't like the calm tone reminiscent of his composure at the library, nor was I comfortable with his blank expression. We had a crime scene without forensics, and a body without a medical examiner. If I didn't counter whatever fresh hell Edward was about to unleash, we’d also lose concrete evidence we had yet to procure. --Prepped for the Kill, Marjorie Gardens Mystery Book 2

I don't believe for one moment that I killed him [...] But if I didn't, somebody else did. I must appoint myself Investigator. I must catch this malefactor, this pig. And if at any time it looks as if I am going to catch myself, I can always accept my resignation.

If you're good at this job, and I am, then every step in a murder case moves you in one direction: towards order. We get thrown shards of senseless wreckage, and we piece them together until we can lift the picture out of the darkness and hold it up to the white light of day, solid, complete, clear. Under all the paperwork and the politics, this is the job; this is its cool shining heart that I love with every fiber of mine. This case was different. It was running backwards, dragging us with it on some ferocious ebb tide. Every step washed us deeper in black chaos, wrapped us tighter in tendrils of crazy and pulled us downwards.

I get a little obsessive, it was my hallmark as a coach. I'm more effective when it gets personal and I tend to stick with a thing until it gets personal. I haven't been doing this that long but so far, knock on wood, I've never had to give up. There's something rewarding about it—when you grab that first slender thread that unravels the whole web. I just can't stand seeing anyone get away with something, and I'm dreading the first time I have to walk away from a case knowing who did it and why, but that there's nothing I can do about it. Amy's right to worry, I'm the world's worst loser, as several generations of junior high teams could tell you. I still mourn games I lost 10 years ago. I swear, I wake up sweating and angry over a pass-action I should have known not to call, I'm not kidding. It's not healthy.

I guess us folks in California are kind of straitlaced and old-fashioned." Hahaha, I thought on the way downstairs. I never thought I'd say those words with a straight face...

I guess you’re going for the hard-ass Texas Ranger thing today” ~ Laney Briggs

I had been a happy normal wife and mother in Orange County until ten years ago, when I was attacked by an evil vampire... and turned into one myself. It's made my life since gross and scary and, let's face it, weird.