Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman — Tell us about the film you’re going to make.Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It’s called “Charlie Chan In London”. It’s a detective story.Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?Morris Weissman: Well, not...

In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it...

It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the...

The detective story is the normal recreation of noble minds.

He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back...

I like a good murder that can’t be found out. That is, of course it is very shocking, but I like to hear about it.

There is no mystery to happiness. Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn — or...

Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional — to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. ‘The detective story,’...

You have the Answer. Just get quiet enough to hear it. ~Pat Obuchowski