The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

'I never saw any of them again—except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them."

Eli by Bill Myers

Opening Lines:

Monday was an inconvenient time to die. Come to think of it, Tuesday through Sunday weren't all that agreeable either.

The Night Walk Men by Jason McIntyre

Page 33

You want to chat about the weather first? Well, fine. We can talk about that first. If it’s important. Before that, though, you need to know one thing. This is going to be painful. This is going to be a bowling ball dropped from waist height on your toes. A dentist’s chair plus a drill plus small talk. This is going to be coming down from on high. Or finding your spouse in bed with another. Or murder-suicide. Or heavy metal from the neighbour at three in the morning. This is going to be the doctor telling you it’s inoperable. Or a chemical burn on flesh. Or pepper spray and a wrongful conviction. This is going to be a fire eating your life’s work. This is going to be Your First Time. Or Your Last Time. This is going to be twelve fresh body bags going under the yellow tape and into the house at the end of Sheppard Street. This is going to be malevolent eyes in the dark staring down into a crib at a screaming baby. This is going to be painful. But we can chat about the weather first. That’s no big deal.

Survivors Club by Lisa Gardner

Page 33:

Meg herself didn't get it. Uncle Vinnie had a loud, booming laugh. He smelled of whiskey and stale cigars. His head was nearly bald, his stomach bursting huge. He looked to her like Kojak crossed with Santa Claus. How could you not like Kojak crossed with Santa Claus?

Killing Rain by Barry Eisler

Page 33:

"I mean, look at us,” he went on. “Are we CIA? No, not really, we’re contractors. But the CIA uses us from time to time. And it ain’t just us. Hell, these days you’ve got Halliburton and Blackwater and DynCorp and Vinnell and Kroll-Crucible… these outfits are springing up all over, and it can be hard to tell where the government ends and the private sector begins."

"That’s true," I said.

"Plus you’ve got the government turning everybody into a bounty hunter by offering twenty-five million for Osama’s scrawny ass."

"Capitalism at work," I said. "Supply and demand."

"I know. Hell, when I was watching us shock and awe the Iraqis on CNN when we first went in, I kept expecting the announcer to say, 'This sortie brought to you by Kellogg’s Rice Krispies,' or something like that. It just ain’t as clear as it used to be."

Kiss Me Deadly by Mickey Spillane

Page 33:

I watched her walk toward the door, taking in every feline motion of her body. There was something lithe and animal-like in the way she swung her hips, a jungle tautness to her shoulders. Cleopatra might have had it. Josephine might have had it. But they never had it like she had it.

Death of a Macho Man by M C Beaton

Page 33:

Why do they call fiction creative writing? What’s uncreative writing?

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Page 90:

Nora said: "You’re just showing off, that’s all it is. And what for? I know bullets bounce off you. You don’t have to prove it to me."

"It’s not going to hurt me to get up."

"And it’s not going to hurt you to stay in bed at least one day. The doctor said—"

"If he knew anything he’d cure his own snuffles." I sat up and put my feet on the floor. Asta tickled them with her tongue.

Nora brought me slippers and robe. "All right, hard guy, get up and bleed on the rugs."

Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Page 33:

It was a face that had nothing to fear. Everything had been done to it that anybody could think of.

He Died With His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond

Opening lines:

He was found in the shrubbery in front of the Word of God House in Albatross Road, West Five. It was the thirtieth of March, during the evening rush-hour. It was bloody cold; and an office worker had tripped over the body when he was caught short going home. I don't know if you know Albatross Road where it runs into Hanger Lane, but if you do you'll appreciate what a ghastly lonely area it is, with the surface-level tube-station on one side of the street, and dank, blind buildings, weeping with damp, on the other.

Peril at End House by Agatha Christie

Page 33:

'I've been hearing all about you and what a wonderful chap you are. Never had a failure, they say.'

'That is not true,' said Poirot. 'I had a bad failure in Belgium in 1893. You recollect, Hastings? I recounted it to you. The affair of the box of chocolates.'

'I remember,' I said.

And I smiled, for at the time that Poirot told me that tale, he had instructed me to say 'chocolate box' to him if ever I should fancy he was growing conceited! He was then bitterly offended when I used the magical words only a minute and a quarter later.

The View from Here by Rachel Howzell

Opening lines:

I sat in the waiting room of Orleigh Tremaine Newman – a Whole Person Corporation. The space stank of old coffee, onions and lavender perfume. The receptionist—a Goth girl named Piper—sat at a messy desk and polished her nails shiny black as the ringing telephone rolled to voice-mail. Boxes of copy paper and toner towered near a dusty, plastic fichus. A crumpled Burger King bag sat atop an abandoned computer monitor.

This space was nothing like my former shrink’s clean, bright and clutter-free waiting room. There, Kimmy, the receptionist, answered the telephone after the first ring and never ate obnoxious foods at her desk. She had remembered each patient’s name and most important, each of our prescription needs.

Killing Rain by Barry Eisler

Page 133:

I remembered something from a childhood visit to church. Matthew, I think, where Jesus said: Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.

I chewed on that for a moment. Then:

Bullshit. God doesn’t care. Like Dox said, if he did care, he would have done something by now.

If he did do something, would you even know what it was? Would you be paying attention?

I would if he smote me, or whatever. Which is what I would do.

Maybe that was the point, though. All this time, I’d been expecting -- hell, demanding -- that God smite me down for my transgressions. And prove himself to me thereby. But what if God weren’t really in the smiting business? What if smiting were all man-made, and God preferred to communicate in more subtle ways, ways that men like me chose to pretend weren’t even there?

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Page 89:

So far I had known just where I stood on the Wolf-Wynant-Jorgensen troubles and what I was doing—the answers were, respectively, nowhere and nothing—but when we stopped at Reuben’s for coffee on our way home at four the next morning, Nora opened a newspaper and found a line in one of the gossip columns: "Nick Charles, former Trans-American Detective Agency ace, on from Coast to sift the Julia Wolf murder mystery"; and when I opened my eyes and sat up in bed some six hours later Nora was shaking me and a man with a gun in his hand was standing in the bedroom doorway.

"I got to talk to you," the man with the gun said. "That’s all, but I got to do that." His voice was low, rasping.

I had blinked myself awake by then. I looked at Nora. She was excited, but apparently not frightened: she might have been watching a horse she had a bet on coming down the stretch with a nose lead. I said: "All right, talk, but do you mind putting the gun away? My wife doesn’t care, but I’m pregnant and I don’t want the child to be born with—"

Miami Blues by Charles Willeford

Page 33:

"What I was telling Sergeant Henderson here is that I suspect foul play."

"What kind of foul play?"

"That was no accident that killed Martin. That was murder."

"If so, it's the first of a kind."

"Let him finish," Henderson said. "There's more."

"That's the best kind," Mr Waggoner continued, "the kind that looks like an accident but really it ain't. I've seen it on the 'The Rockford Files' more than once, and if it wasn't for Jim Rockford, a lot of people'd get away with it, too."

A Touch of Deceit by Gary Ponzo

Opening lines:

There was a time when Nick Bracco would walk down Gold Street late at night and young vandals would scatter. The law was present and the guilty took cover. West Baltimore was alive with crime, but Gold Street remained quarantined, reserved for the dirtiest of the dirty. That’s how Nick remembered it anyway. Before he left for the Bureau to fight terrorists. Now, the narrow corridor of row houses felt closer to him and the slender strip of buckled sidewalk echoed his footsteps like a sentry announcing his presence. It wasn’t his turf anymore. He was a foreigner.
Nick scrutinized the landscape and searched for something out of place. The battered cars seemed right, the graffiti, even the shadows seemed to darken the proper corners. But something was missing. There were no lookouts on the concrete stairwells. The ubiquitous bass line of hip-hop was absent. The stillness reminded him of jungle birds falling silent in the prelude to danger. The only comfort came from the matching footsteps beside him. As usual, Matt McColm was by his side. They’d been partners for ten years and were approaching the point of finishing each other’s sentences.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Matt said.
“Did I mention that I don’t have a good feeling about this?”
“Uh, huh.” Matt tightened his collar against the autumn chill and worked a piece of gum with his jaw. “That’s your theme song.”

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

Page 99:

"Sit tight? Yeah, right! I bet Morgan was sitting tight when she got bitten. There’s probably some little rat tunnel that leads all the way up here from the basement!" Her eyes swept the apartment, searching for tiny cracks in the walls, holes that could let the pestilence inside. Already the old fears were stirring inside her.

"Well, maybe a year ago there was," I said soothingly. "But now there’s steel wool stuffed under that chained-up door, and a ton of peanut butter behind the false wall. The disease is probably contained for the moment."

"Probably? So you’re asking me to trust my life to steel wool and peanut butter?"

"Poisoned peanut butter."

"Cal, I don’t care if it’s nuclear peanut butter." She stood up and stomped into her bedroom. I heard the scrape of vinyl across the floor, the sound of zippers, and the clatter of clothes hangers.

I went to her doorway and saw that she was packing a bag. "You’re splitting?"

"No shit, Sherlock."

The Hills of Homicide by Louis L'Amour

Page 33:

Caronna, unless I was greatly mistaken, was an alumnus of the old Chicago School for Genteel Elimination. In any rubout job he did he would have a safe and sane alibi.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Page 33:

Asta jumped up and punched me in the belly with her front feet. I shut off the radio and poured myself a cocktail. The man whose name I had not caught was saying: “Comes the revolution and we’ll all be lined up against the wall—first thing.” He seemed to think it was a good idea.

The Devil In Bellminster by David Holland

Page 33:

He arrayed his forces across the path through the Estwold, a dozen men to each side spread out within clear sight of one another, perhaps ten or twenty paces between. Then off they moved like a great machine, calling and halloing, stirring the bushes and brambles about, driving the birds and hares ahead of them. They muttered to one another, communicating in short bursts of speech, concise and businesslike. They hunted as men hunt who have the cunning to provide for their own, with eyes trained to see that Tuckworth missed, the mark of a passing stag, the sign of a nesting quail, all the dark and hidden life of the forest.