An unmarked cop car carrying Mitch Lawson and Brock Lucas…

“... and Louisa watched another car arriving, this one as unmarked as the cop cars, but more so.”

— Mick Herron

If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the…

— Rex Stout

Johannes Cabal would kill me for saying this, but he's my favorite Zeppelin-hopping detective. The fellow has got all the charm of Bond and…

— Daniel H. Wilson

Personally I had the opportunity to go on several ride alongs with the LA County Sheriff's Department with some amazing detectives, who were invaluable…

— Nancy McKeon

What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

— P. D. James

A woman went so far as to hire private detectives to contact me to help bring her out of what she called a hypnotic…

— Charley Pride

Detective, I don't know where the boyfriend is, really," I said. And it was true, considering tide, current, and the habits of marine scavengers.…

— Jeff Lindsay

Then there are some minor points that strike me as suggestive - for instance, the position of Mrs. Hubbard's sponge bag, the name of…

— Agatha Christie

American violence is public life, it's a public way of life, it became a form, a detective story form. So I should think that…

— Chester Himes

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

— E. M. Forster

The general public have a warped view of the speed at which an investigation proceeds. They like to imagine tense conversations going on behind…

— Ben Aaronovitch

This is really good,” Donovan Caine said, attacking his third strawberry pancake. “You sound surprised,” I said. He shrugged. “I just didn’t think an…

— Jennifer Estep

In ordinary detective novels you never see the consequences of what happens in a story in the next book. That you do in mine.

— Anonymous

Rita folded her arms around herself and peered up at me. “If you’d asked me three months ago I’d have said you were hitting…

— C.E. Murphy

Gonna rain like a cow pissin' on a flat rock" [drugstore clerk to detective Virgil Flowers] Dark of the Moon, p.7

— John Sandford