“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
-Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
-Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes
“The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.”
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
“The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.”
-Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man
“We didn't exactly believe your story, Miss O'Shaughnessy, we believed your 200 dollars. I mean, you paid us more than if you had been telling us the truth, and enough more to make it alright.”
-Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
“I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats… and the rest I wasted.”
-Elmore Leonard, LaBrava
“There were not so many physical threats that could not be countered with a decent hammer.”
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire
“The dead have never bothered me. It's the living that I fear.”
-Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem
“The hard thing about death is that nothing ever changes. The hard thing about life is that nothing stays the same.”
-Sue Grafton, J is for Judgment
“There is nothing you can do about the past except keep it there.”
-Michael Connelly, The Brass Verdict
“There is no client as scary as an innocent man.”
-Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer
“Woe to he who checkmates his opponents at last, only to discover they have been playing cribbage.”
-Jedediah Berry, The Manual of Detection
“The joke was thinking you were ever really in charge of your life. You pressed your oar down into the water to direct the canoe, but it was the current that shot you through the rapids."
-Scott Turow, Innocent
“They found out about him in July and stayed angry all through August. They tried to kill him in September."
-Lee Child, Without Fail
“Put all your eggs in one basket... the handle's going to break. Then all you've got is scrambled eggs.”
-J.D. Robb, Remember When
“It doesn't have to make sense; it just has to sound like it does.”
-Elmore Leonard, Freaky Deaky
“He was too old to be working, too young to be dead, and too broke to do anything else.”
-Chris Culver, Just Run
“Love, when you get fear in it, it's not love any more. It's hate.”
-James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice
“Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.”
-Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
“It takes far less courage to cling to the past than it does to face the future.”
-Sandra Brown, Envy
“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.”
-Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
“If you place your head in a lion's mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.”
-Agatha Christie
“I have great faith in fools … my friends call it self-confidence.”
-Edgar Allan Poe

Porfiry Petrovich Series

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The Gentle Axe
R. N. Morris

Fresh off the case of a deranged student who murdered his landlady, noted police investigator...

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A Vengeful Longing
R. N. Morris

As the laconic investigator follows a trail that begins innocently with a box of chocolates,...

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Razor Wrapped in Silk
R.N. Morris

St. Petersburg. 1870. A child factory worker is mysteriously abducted. A society beauty is...

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The Cleansing Flames
R.N. Morris

It's Easter, 1872. Fires burn in St. Petersburg, a prelude to the revolutionary turmoil that...

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