Sleuthing Quotes

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.

I like to consider myself a detective, which is how I justify my obsession with my phone. By nature, since I was a kid, I've always wanted to be a detective, and any portal to information and investigating things I have ever been given access to, I have dived into. With my phone, unfortunately, I have immediate access to everything.

I was obsessed with Nancy Drew growing up - I couldn't get enough.

I remember devouring the entire Hardy Boys series over one summer, enthralled by their bravery and cleverness.

I play a detective, very close to myself actually.

In the classic 70s episodes, Columbo is rarely seen on his own. We typically do not see Columbo 'for himself,' only for the criminal, leaving the possibility that the entire Columbo persona - his shambling manner, his absent mindedness, even his references to his wife - may all be a performance designed to disarm the murderer.

I've been fascinated by mysteries for as long as I can remember. Real, fictional, solved, unsolved, I don't care; they all fascinate me. I think that's a core human trait.

I've always felt if you followed a real private detective around, it would be boring.

Trying to solve the mystery is what I enjoy most about writing.

Along came a police lieutenant named Columbo, and my life would never be the same.

Trying to be Sherlock Holmes is like trying to catch an arrow in mid-flight.

When I was younger, I watched all the detective shows.

I did surveillance a lot, which sounds exciting, but it never was.

This element of surprise or mystery the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called is of great importance in a plot.

When I was 12 years old, I was obsessed with codes, conspiracies, and secret messages.

The first thing that put me on the map was my Sherlock Holmes novel.

I've always loved mysteries, the something there that you didn't know, and with 'Case Histories' I just decide to make that more up-front.

To this day, I've never figured out a single locked-room mystery.

I'd love to do a Columbo-type detective character in a series.

I was always a big fan of 'Quincy,' and I loved the idea of puzzle solving.

In 'Hope Never Dies', the fictional Obama and Biden go up against drug traffickers, outlaw bikers, and other seedy opponents. They're forced to use skills they didn't know they had. Or, to put it another way, unlike Jordan Peele's Obama, this Obama doesn't need an anger translator.

My first novel, 'Compromising Positions,' was a whodunit. The protagonist was a Long Island Jewish housewife who turns private investigator. But she was Jewish the way I was: lighting Sabbath candles but envying her Protestant and Catholic friends' December decorating options.

I'm very good at solving mysteries.

He just waited until I stopped talking and said, 'Jesus, kid, you're almost a detective. All you need now is a gun, a gut, and three ex-wives. So what's your theory?

Detective stories keep alive a view of the world which ought to be true. Of course people read them for fun ... But underneath they feed a hunger for justice ... you offer to divert them, and you show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living.