Murder Mysteries Quotes

“Personally I like the English style better. It is not quite so brittle, and the people as a rule, just wear clothes and drink drinks. There is more sense of background, as if Cheesecake Manor really existed all around and not just the part the camera sees; there are more long walks over the Downs and the characters don’t all try to behave as if they had just been tested by MGM. The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

“People named Tinkerbell name their daughters Susan.”
― Neil Gaiman, Murder Mysteries

“forgetfulness can sometimes bring freedom of a sort”
― Neil Gaiman, Murder Mysteries

“It occurred to me then that the man might not be mad; I found this far more disquieting than the alternative.”
― Neil Gaiman, Murder Mysteries

“Perhaps it is true that all that happens is in accordance with Your will, and thus it is good. But sometimes You leave blood on Your instruments.”
― Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions

“It had always been a part of his job which he found difficult, the total lack of privacy for the victim. Murder stripped away more than life itself. The body was parceled, labelled, dissected; address books, diaries, confidential letters, every part of the victim's life was sought out and scrutinized. Alien hands moved among the clothes, picked up and examined the small possessions, recorded and labelled for public view the sad detritus of sometimes pathetic lives.”
― P.D. James, The Murder Room

“In the absence of any concrete evidence. I plump for Leonard Stock as the murderer. First, because he's the most unlikely person, and as anyone who has ever read a murder story knows, it's always the most unlikely person who turns out to have done the deed--and fifty thousand authors can't be wrong.”
― M.M. Kaye, Death in the Andamans

“The unsigned will is one of those tropes of detective fiction that I’ve come to dislike, only because it’s so overused. In real life, a lot of people don’t even bother to make a will but then we’ve all managed to persuade ourselves that we’re going to live for ever. They certainly don’t go round the place threatening to change it in order to give someone the perfect excuse to come and kill them. It looked as if Alan Conway had done exactly that.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“I'm a huge fan of mysteries; in fact, they're almost an addiction. If a week goes by without reading a mystery, I suffer withdrawal symptoms. Then I wander around like I'm sleepwalking and wake up in a bookshop, looking for a mystery novel. I've read just about every mystery story ever written...but it's not an intellectual pursuit; it's more like me getting my fill of gossip.”
― Sōji Shimada, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

“What mystery novels need are – some might call me old-fashioned – a great detective, a mansion, a shady cast of residents, bloody murders, impossible crimes and never-before-seen tricks played by the murderer. Call it my castle in the sky, but I’m happy as long as I can enjoy such a world. But always in an intellectual manner.”
― Yukito Ayatsuji, The Decagon House Murders

“Warm regards to all my readers. If I may offer just one piece of advice, it would be to never put off until tomorrow what you may not be able to do hence. (From A New World (KDP 2025) by Ron Scott, ISBN 979-8-9908692-3-3.”
― Ron Scott