Detective Fiction Quotes

I think my Wallander stories give a fairly good image of the world in the 1990s. I don't regret anything about that - on the contrary!

HBO and I have a deal to at least try to make a television series from the Leonid McGill stories. We're going to start with the first novel, 'The Long Fall.'

Crime novels have a clear beginning, middle, and end: a mystery, its investigation, and its resolution. The reader expects events to play out logically and efficiently, and these expectations force the writer to spend a good deal of time working on macrostructure rather than prettifying individual sentences.

At first I imagined I'd write detective novels, because I loved 'Nancy Drew.'

When I was a kid, what captivated me about detective fiction were the puzzles more than the detectives or their enemies. And as I've gotten older, I see a lot of merit in setting your investigative sights higher than figuring out how someone stole Encyclopedia Brown's bicycle.

For many years, I read mystery novels for relaxation. But my tastes were too narrow - and, having read all of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, I discovered that the implausibility and the thinness of the people distracted me unduly from the plot.

I had a publishing history of murder mysteries.

I love crime, I love sci-fi and many other things.

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

I will live in TV Land watching 'Columbo.' I also like my 'Forensic Files,' all of that true crime.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

Well you know I've been fan of Tony Hillerman's books for years.

I always read a lot as a kid and I'd spend long periods of time in my room reading... I wasn't reading anything great until I got older, but I used to read Agatha Christie mysteries and all of Ian Fleming's 'James Bond' novels.

I read two mysteries a day when I was a kid. All of Agatha Christie, all of 'Sherlock Holmes.' I've seen every single British detective show ever made.

I've been in an Agatha Christie called 'The Sittaford Mystery,' which I enjoyed, but 'The Pale Horse' has a real sense of intrigue and the jigsaw pieces fitting together.

Noir is dead for me because historically, I think it's a simple view. I've taken it as far as it can go. I think I've expanded on it a great deal, taken it further than any other American novelist.

There is even - as with no other game - a fascinating detective literature, a wry commentary on the human comedy, implicit in the book of rules.

I didn't know I was doing film noir, I thought they were detective stories with low lighting!

I never read the "Bobbsey Twins" or "Boxcar Children."But I did remember being downtown, at the bookstore by myself and having an allowance and spending it on a Nancy Drew mysteries. And I was probably eleven, twelve.

Narrativity presumes a special taste for plot. And this taste for plot was always very present in the Anglo-Saxon countries and that explains their high quality of detective novels.

...and then a murder mystery will occur.

'The Big Sleep' would have been a more effective study of nightmarish existence had the detective been more complicated and had more curiosity been shown about his sweetheart's relation to the crime.

I can still remember. I was ill, and I was seven, and my father didn't want me to just read children's books. He came with Conan Doyle. I tried, and I liked it. I think the first I read was 'The Sign of the Four'; 'Study in Scarlet' was the next one. Then I guess I stayed home a few extra days from school to read.

I never write thinking, 'What would a woman do?' any more than I think, 'What would a man do?' It comes down to what would a solid detective do in these circumstances.

You know, people call mystery novels or thrillers 'puzzles.' I never understood that, because when I buy a puzzle, I already know what it is. It's on the box. And even if I don't, if it's a 5,000-piece puzzle of the 'Mona Lisa', it's not like I put the last piece in and go, 'I had no idea it's the 'Mona Lisa'!'