Books Quote by Raymond Chandler

That's why I love crime novels so much: When I write a crime novel, the conflict is built in.

— Karin Slaughter

“Might it also be that creating narratives around murder allows a measure of comfort? Murder in the abstract is terrifying; in the details, you…

— Emily Maguire

“In most crime novels the violent act, usually the murder, is the engine. Take that away and there is little left to drive the…

— Mo Hayder

The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of…

— Ian Rankin

But, in addition, there is, all through the tragedy, a constant alternation of rises and falls in this tension or in the emotional pitch…

— Andrew Coyle Bradley

“It's strange when you think about it. There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative…

— Anthony Horowitz

As writers and readers, we're drawn to conflict. It's that ancient theory of plot that's written on the whiteboard during every fiction workshop, characters…

— Leslie Pietrzyk

“It is always easy to mock 'distress,' but we are its contemporaries; we are at the endpoint of what Nous, ratio, & Logos, still…

— Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

I'm not the first person to have said this - no writer ever feels that the execution of a book lives up to the…

— Stephen King

“And, in fact, if these crimes appeal less to the senses, they appeal more to the mind; and the mind, in the last analysis,…

— Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

So much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can't read that.

— Donna Leon

To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.

— Anita Brookner