Maybe at the very bottom of it… I really don’t like God. You know, it’s silly to say I don’t like God because I don’t believe in God, but in the same sense that I don’t like Iago, or the Reverend Slope or any of the other villains of literature, the god of traditional Judaism...

Sometimes the crime follows the punishment, which only serves to prove the foresight of the Great God.””That’s what my grandmother used to say,” said Brutha automatically.”Indeed? I would like to know more about this formidable lady.””She used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the...

After all, people seemed quite easy about having their rights and liberties taken away by those they looked up to, but somehow a space on the perch was a slap in the face, and treated as such.

What better weapon than the human brain? The human brain was Mrs Twartski’s and Wiezenslowski’s domain. The children who were used were the castaways of the United States government, like dogs abandoned and a vet’s office. Mrs. Twartski read the letter out loud, slowly and carefully enunciating every word in her thick Polish accent. The...

Al… You ever kill anybody? In the United States? Because I know you mean it and everything, but I know these guys better than I know you. They’re soldiers, that’s all. No questions, no time to ask, no talk. Cops are worse, and less predictable. When you pull a gun, you’ve gotta be ready to...

interview from Ross E. Cheit about The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children (Oxford University Press, February 2014).In the foreword to your book you mention a book titled Satan’s Silence was the catalyst for your research. Tell us about that. Cheit: Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker solidified the witch-hunt narrative in...

He knew more about the death of Lula Landry than he had ever meant or wanted to know; the same would be true of virtually any sentient being in Britain. Bombarded with the story, you grew interested against your will, and before you knew it, you were so well informed, so opinionated about the facts...

witch hunts” in the 1980s. There were big mistakes made in how some cases were handled, particularly in the earliest years. But even in those years there were cases such as those of Frank Fuster and Kelly Michaels that, I believe, were based on substantial evidence but later unfairly maligned as having no evidentiary support.

The last I knew you were going to a party. just a few friends at the McEvoys’ you told me. The science club, you told me. What happened? You got into a fight about the theory of relativity? Did creationists crash the party and start a rumble?

Crime writers, I’ve noticed, can be jumpy. They live in a world where there are murderers on the loose and they haven’t been caught yet!

Google maps are one thing but there’s no substitute for pounding the beat and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to break into the back of the houses on Belgrave Place. Once I even for followed by a suspicious householder – I’d been hanging around staring at the exterior of his...

A glass poured to air for the one who sits with us unseen; the patron and protector, the Crooked Warden, the Father of Necessary Pretexts. Thanks for deep pockets poorly guarded. Thanks for watchmen asleep at their posts. Thanks for the city to nurture us and the night to hide us. Thanks for friends to...

Maupassant is a man of mitigating circumstances, the lawyer who can bring the jurors around by demonstrating that they too could have committed such a crime. We are all murderers.

The crime novel has always been my favourite genre.

If humanity as a whole was to embrace and practice love; mankind would make history of transforming a bleak world overnight, for out of love we do the right things that are not meant to harm but to build.

So where’d you park the car, Max?”I don’t know. I couldn’t see over the wheel.”That’s okay. I think I can smell it.

I am the scourge of God

This is what you know about someone you have to hate: he charges you with his crime and castigates himself in you.

Being a copper I like to see the law win. I’d like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred guys that got knocked over on their first caper amd never had a break since. That’s what I’d like....

He didn’t know the right people. That’s all a police record means in this rotten crime-ridden country.

His mind is like that. On the inside, where he never smiles.

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

Really, some cases shouldn’t even smell the court room. Screw Habaeus Corpus, lock up the criminal and have the keys thrown away.

It’s odd to imagine, of course: you pass a car on a lonely rural highway; you sit beside a man in a diner and share views with him; you wait behind a customer checking into a motel, a friendly man with a winning smile and twinkling hazel eyes, who’s happy to fill you in on...

We want to be saved from our misery, but not from our sin. We want to sin without misery, just as the prodigal son wanted inheritance without the father. The foremost spiritual law of the physical universe is that this hope can never be realized. Sin always accompanies misery. There is no victimless crime, and...

An ax came through the door. Then two firefighters. They looked down at and assistant mall manager crying and wearing a melted toupee, sitting cross-legged next to a mall cop with a bleeding ankle and a mouth full of paper. One of the firefighters look at the other. “Not again.

…Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media…Given that most of the hearings took place out of sight of the press, the following examples are taken from the recollection of child protection workers present in court. In one case, during a controversy...

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

A few years ago I started an online flirtation with a high school flame, Andy. Things got weird and I called it off and two months later…Versace was dead…dead.

The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.

This doll-guy situation is an extreme of what I deal with in everyday life, where men believe that what they want I want, and they project that on to me and then blame me, curse me, when I don’t respond the way they’ve fantasized, like it’s some personal attack on them, like they’re entitled to...

Behind every crime lies an insult

I suppose most crime writing is urban. There’s not a lot… certainly not in Australia, people don’t often set books in the countryside.

Many who resort to crime ultimately can’t read or write.

I did.”Conversation between Alis K and WillyThe Informer

Just calm down and think, sir. Think. Where is your wife?

I rushed to the bathroom for every corner of the hospital was suffocating. I got hold of acid-bottle, which was meant for toilet cleaning. As I took it into my hands, I realized I had more filth inside me than a toilet. A toilet could be cleaned by an acid bottle, or a toilet cleaner,...

No crime too small’ was never exactly Moriarty’s slogan, but the criminal genius would apply himself to minor offences if an unusual challenge was presented.

Do you think he’s the murderer?””It’s worse than that — he’s an actor!

Sexy, sexy veggies. You two need to go on lots of dates together.

The Russians are on the radar. It’s time.”As Bounter turned to pick up the tiny button-size microphone, Grant clenched his hands into fists, his anticipation building.It’s time.

I don’t really consider any of my novels ‘crime’ novels.

He [Harry Bosch] defined good company not by the conversation but by the lack of it. When there was no need to talk to feel comfortable, that was the right company

But, you know, there’s still an argument, there’s still ten states that outlaw premarital sex, and many more states where adultery is still outlawed and a crime.

And, in fact, if these crimes appeal less to the senses, they appeal more to the mind; and the mind, in the last analysis, is the profoundest part of us. For the novelist, therefore, there is a new type of tragedy to be derived from these crimes, more intellectual than physical in character, which do...

No one can escape slavery; we are all slaves in some regards. We are slaves to our parent’s expectations. We are slaves to the pressures of our peers. We are slaves to our own ideologies and faiths.

He was not looking forward to breaking the law. He was straight now. He’d matured. Crime no longer excited him.What?’ Ronald said.I didn’t say anything.’You’re breathing heavy.

And maybe that’s was her biggest crime of all. Making him fall in love with her.

When you commit a crime to upgrade yourself, your sin becomes a blessing, but your blessing kills you before your time.

Security is a double-edged sword: While a fence sure protects the fenced; it also imprisons the protected.