Dorothy Williamson

“Honest. I’m fine,” he said, taking a sip of his tea. There was no danger in that. Unlike biscuits, tea—and all other hot beverages, in fact—was given and received freely, with no conditions implied or inferred. It was widely accepted that only a monster would use tea as a bargaining tool. It just wasn’t done. A cup of tea committed you to nothing and no one. Well, nothing except the obligation to someday return the favour, and that was just common decency.”
― J.D. Kirk, A Snowball's Chance in Hell

“The general consensus was that chief officers were a different breed. Their well-honed sense of self- and pension-preservation seemed to take priority above all else. The so-called College of Policing Strategic Command Course had a lot to answer for in churning out these clones, but whatever else took place to train chief officers, one thing he knew for sure: it included a form of yoga that was so far advanced that no matter what their size or shape, it showed them how to”
― Deborah Lucy, The Complete Detective Temple Mysteries Books 1–3

“There should be a word for it, Ryan thought. A word was needed to describe the unique emotion a murder detective experienced when they looked upon the decaying carcass of what had once been a living, breathing person. It was another kind of privilege, he thought, because only a handful of people would see the remains of Father Jacob Jamieson in such a compromised, vulnerable state; only they would know how to treat those remains with respect and care—which mattered, whether or not the person who’d once inhabited that body turned out to have been good or bad. Sadness, disgust, nausea, impotence… Ryan felt them all, yet none of those words was adequate to describe the whole, raw experience.”
― L.J. Ross, Cuthbert's Way

“Back in the late seventies and early eighties,” Thierry said, “when the Socialists realized they were out of step with the French people and would soon be out of office, they opened the gates and brought in all the North Africans they could, as the Arabs in gratitude would vote almost exclusively Socialist. In a national campaign with several candidates, two percent of the votes can be a huge margin, and having millions of Islamic voters can win the presidency though you barely get thirty percent of the total. It’s the only thing that’s kept the Socialists in power”
― Mike Bond, Goodbye Paris