Best 145 quotes in «detective quotes» category

It is not for me to suspect but to detect.

It's a tough job being somebody's personal assistant. You have to anwser their phone, manage their correspondence, run their errands, pay their bills, arrange their schedule, and basically do whatever tasks, menial to major, they are too busy or self absorbed or distranted or pampered or disinterested to do themselves.

It seems you can’t go anywhere today without seeing some popular culture rendition of Vampyres. I went into a bookstore a few weeks ago and there was an entire section devoted to Teenage Paranormal Romance. Can you imagine?

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.

It would do her good to have some demons to fight, to be swung out in space and held over some bottomless pit now and then.

It takes a certain kind of man willing to work long, grueling hours in a career offering few rewards.

I used to believe, bless my naive little heart, that I had something to offer the robbed dead. Not revenge-there’s no revenge in the world that could return the tiniest fraction of what they’ve lost-and not justice, whatever that means, but the one thing left to give them: the truth. I was good at it. I had one, at least, of the things that make a great detective: the instinct for truth, the inner magnet whose pull tells you beyond any doubt what’s dross, what’s alloy, and what’s the pure, uncut metal. I dug out the nuggest without caring when they cut my fingers and brought them in my cupped hands to lay on graves, until I found out-Operation Vestal again-how slippery they were, how easily they crumbled, how deep they sliced and, in the end, how very little they were worth.

I used to believe, bless my naive little heart, that I had something to offer the robbed dead. Not revenge-there’s no revenge in the world that could return the tiniest fraction of what they’ve lost-and not justice, whatever that means, but the one thing left to give them: the truth. I was good at it. I had one, at least, of the things that make a great detective: the instinct for truth, the inner magnet whose pull tells you beyond any doubt what’s dross, what’s alloy, and what’s the pure, uncut metal. I dug out the nuggets without caring when they cut my fingers and brought them in my cupped hands to lay on graves, until I found out-Operation Vestal again-how slippery they were, how easily they crumbled, how deep they sliced and, in the end, how very little they were worth.

Murder and suicide aren't genetic,' Julia said, scoffing sandwiches in the Black Swan in Helmsley after their visit to Rievaulx Terraces. 'Nathan isn't predisposed to tragedy.' Jackson wasn't so sure about that but he kept that thought to himself.

Looking back, I know that the man possessed no gift of prophecy; he simply worked to assure his own future, while I skated uncertainly toward mine. It was his flat-voiced "Cherchez la femme" that still haunts me. Because our partnership was nothing but a bungling road to the Dahlia. And in the end, she was to own the two of us completely.

My last name is Poirot, like Agatha Christie's famous detective Hercule Poirot; no relation to the fictional character.

My style isn't subtle, I know that. I'm sure in fact it violates all kinds of rules about interrogation and all that, I never studied the field. I'm not sure it would have helped anyway—some of the greatest quarterbacks of all time had unconventional styles, I think that's the way the world ought to work. You don't take a guy who's finding success and make him unlearn his style and do it the traditional way, it's encouraging mediocrity. Nobody ever knew when Randall Cunningham was going to get happy feet or when Favre was going to shovel pass a TD out of a sack. You train that stuff out of them and you take away that surprise. So I ask questions, I look for soft, spongy areas and push on them to see if the person cries out. It doesn't endear me to a lot of people, but I've got enough friends and I'm not looking for more.

My mother’s father, Grandfather Thieme, the son of a railroad engineer, looked quite dapper as a young man. Prior to 1933 the Hamburg Police Department consisted of 21 units, with 2,100 men. My grandfather was a Polizist with the Sicherheitspolizei or uniformed policeman with the department. Later, with an expansion of the Hamburg Police Department to 5,500 men and the formation of an investigative branch, he was promoted to the esteemed position of a Kriminalbeamte inspector. He rose to the rank of Chief of Detectives, and had a reputation of being tough, and not someone you could mess with. Having a baldhead and the general appearance of Telly Savalas, the late Hollywood movie actor, I don’t think anyone did. An action story and part of my grandfather’s legacy was when he chased a felon across the rooftops of prewar Hamburg, firing his Dienstpistole, service revolver, as he made his way from one steep inclined slate roof to the next. Of course, Grandpa got his man! Even with this factual tidbit, there isn’t all that much I know about him, other than that, at the then ripe old age of sixty-four, he peacefully died in his chair while reading the evening newspaper.

Norm was lean, his short, straight black hair parted on the side, his mustache trimmed like he’d never heard of Adolf Hitler.

- No estoy dispuesto a hablar, Eddie. ¿Por qué iba a hacerlo? Dejó la pistola sobre el escritorio y la golpeó con la mano abierta. - Esto -dijo-. Y yo podría hacer que le resultara provechoso. - Ya, eso suena mejor. No meta la pistola en este asunto. Yo siempre estoy dispuesto a escuchar el sonido del dinero.

Once I went professionally to an archaeological expedition- and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, evEryThing is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scare here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking TO do- clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth-the naked shining truth.

It was quite elementary,' returned the detective with a languid gesture of one hand.

Not his real home, his real home, the one he never named any more, was the dark and sooty chamber in his heart that contained his sister and his brother and, because it was an accommodating kind of space, the entire filthy history of the industrial revolution.

She looked at his face and saw a monk and a detective, both beautiful and bizarre.

Now, ironically, in astronomy, the word "revolution" means "a celestial object that comes full circle." Did you know that? Which, if you think about it, is pretty funny, considering here on earth it means change.

¿Quiere que vaya a la iglesia y me confiese? ¿Cree que los detectives nos rebajamos a hablar con sacerdotes? No existe para nosotros el arrepentimiento, la reconciliación ni el perdón. Somos filósofos de la acción, y solo nos miramos en el espejo de nuestros actos.

Rene Caron takes my breath away!

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

She tried to focus on the element of riddle or at least puzzle contained in the letter and ignore the sense of doom that was sweeping through her like clouds rolling to the shore over open water.

Persistence is often a detective's greatest ally.

Simon's brain tried to comprehend the situation. 'Was an international supermodel really holding Doc Gutson, leader of the infamous Bloodworth Gang, captive?

She had an ass that could make any man sin."~ Gunner Wilson

Starke entered his house a detective, slipped off his shoes and became a husband and father. It was five in the morning. The world was blue. He went to the refrigerator and opened the door, looking for answers to mysteries he would never comprehend. So he closed it and settled for water instead.

Strike teringat kata Adler, "Kebohongan tidak akan masuk akal, kecuali kebenaran mengandung bahaya yang setara.

Tell me, Mrs. Moon, will your need for sustenance trouble you on this excursion? How often do you need to feed?" I couldn't tell whether his interest was scientific, or whether he was afraid I might plunge my teeth into his throat at any moment.

Terrible accident; body parts was everywhere—-fingers, toes, wings, beaks. Ambulance people tried to scoop him all up, but apparently it ain’t so easy as you might think—telling a chicken from a Chinaman, I mean. Anyways, they got his weight off his driver’s license, picked up a hundred and thirty pounds of pieces and buried ‘em. Now his wife come every year 'bout this time to pay her respects. We don't serve chicken while she's here. Hope you ain't got a taste for it.

Thanks to Dashiell Hammett. "He was thin, walked with a stick, and was the only private dick I knew who used the pockets of his sport coat. Maybe that means something, maybe not." Ramone Ramone, 2013

That the loss of a man, even if he had been the love of her life, was not the end of a woman's existence.

that was the thing about luck, its laws were those of scarcity.

The criminal mind is perverted and convoluted but almost invariably unimaginative,'he said as Molly came out in a fluster

The detective embodies, even more than the romantic drifter, rationality; this intriguing and apparent dichotomy pertains to a significant part of Bengali children’s literature as well – that ofen, especially in the proliferation of adventure, spy and mystery genres in Bengali in the first half of the twentieth century, children’s literature is not so much an escape from the humanist logos of ‘high’ literary practice, but a coming to its irreducible possibilities from a different direction.

The good thing about the aristocracy – German or English – was that they were easily traced, Mirabelle thought.

The great thing in these cases is to keep an absolutely open mind. Most crimes, you see, are so absurdly simple.

The light clicks on, right above my head, drawing my eyes to it. The moment I look up, squinting, I know I’m in trouble. There isn’t even a guy leaning against the corner, trying to play bad cop. There isn’t a guy smiling and offering me a cup of coffee. There’s just one man in a suit, with a folder in his arms that he isn’t looking at. He’s looking at me, raising his eyebrows and looking as if I have a note stuck to my forehead that I haven’t noticed yet.

Then this," Grimm said, "is what I believe professional inquisitors refer to as a clue." "In my considered judgment as an occasional inquisitor for the Spirearch," Benedict said, "I believe you may be correct.

The perfectly measured burr of a dispassionate detective had suddenly changed into the explosive boom of a take-no-shit street cop. Suffice it to say, I froze.

The photo I had engraved on Mike’s stone makes me smile. I can only imagine what he’d say about the likes of me today: private investigator. He’d never believe it. Huge difference from when we worked the streets together.I can still hear his voice. “Here, Paul. Taste this.” When I concentrate hard enough, I can still taste that awful cooking of his. If there truly is life after death, I sure hope he’s a better cook now than he was back then. Funny the things you miss after someone you love is gone.

There was a rifle on his lap. "Hey, Hunter," Myron said.

The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don't play at it.

The instant Isabella Cortez left the safety of the FBI building, goose bumps skittered across her skin and her senses went on high alert.

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.

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.

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.

This was the second murder with which I’d found myself associated. Unlike the death of my client in April, my estranged uncle and his gang had nothing to do with this. And as far as I was aware, Arthur Teague was not a thug with the Fernoza Family mafia. --Prepped for the Kill, Marjorie Gardens Mystery Book 2

Time is a terrible thing because it can erase both joys and pains.