Quotes from Deborah Crombie

Kincaid refrained from saying that few children seemed to appreciate being given advantages their parents lacked—they saw such benefits as their due.

A rose on a steel stem

Gemma murmured. Even if she could afford Stella's

What he wanted was his own small universe, house and garden, a world he could control, an order he could impose.

Men often substitute anger for grief, because anger is the only emotion they're taught it's acceptable to feel.

the willows, whose drooping fronds reached out to touch their own reflections.

But if you read Christie or Allingham or Sayers, the detective always got his man. And you'll notice that the detective always operated outside the system—the stories expressed a comforting belief in the validity of individual action.

toxic, white phosphorous, and I

We late-lamented, resting here, Are mixed to human jam, And each to each exclaims in fear, 'I know not which I am!' " —Thomas Hardy, "The Levelled Churchyard," 1882

After a moment, Callery shrugged. "We'll go in, then, the two of us, with Weeping Myrtle here." He nodded towards the café. "It's Moaning Myrtle," Kincaid corrected, feeling a flicker of surprise at Callery's Harry Potter reference. He didn't seem the fantasy type. And somehow he couldn't imagine that this man had kids.

You can only do things one day at a time, sport. Sometimes life is so bloody that's the only way you can get through it. But the good bit about living one day at a time is that when nice things happen, you enjoy them more than people who are always thinking about the past or the future.

support," he added, gesturing at his ankle

He was carried along as easily as a shell in a wave.

A lifetime's accumulation, she thought, of a woman who had cared about things—things loved for their color and texture and their associations rather than their material value.

realized he wasn't the one

They made Caesar salad with Cashel Blue cheese. They made Irish lobster confit in Kerrygold butter. They made black pudding the way Fergus remembered it from his childhood, and lamb sausages so delicate they almost melted in your mouth. Everything they put on the menu got raves.

He said the words flatly, with an ease born of years of practice, yet it still amazed him that such simple sentences could contain such betrayal.

A curved bar partially divided the large front room. Behind it, a young woman with curly blond hair tied back with a red bandanna drew pints with cheerful efficiency. "What can I get for you?" she asked, smiling, as they reached the bar. "Just some information," said Gemma, returning the smile and holding up her warrant card. The girl's eyes widened. She glanced to either side, checking that

Kincaid wondered what universal formula required that a person should sit down to receive bad news. Was it merely a precaution against fainting or falling, or had it become a kind of foreshadowing, effective in easing the shock?

said, "before you have your wicked way with me. I'm Tommy Godwin, by the way." "So I'd gathered," retorted Gemma, escaping gratefully to the loo. Once safely behind the closed

Gemma searched for a moment, then gave a laugh

to the great Spirit and Fountain of life, all things, in both space and time, must be present Ã¢â'¬Â¦ action, once begun, never ceases Ã¢â'¬Â¦ thus the past is always present, although, for the purpose of fitting us for this mortal life, our ordinary senses are so constituted as to be unperceptive of these phenomena. —CATHERINE CROWE, FROM THE NIGHT-SIDE OF NATURE

jutting bosom, and closer acquaintance had done nothing

His father, who had rebelled early against his Scots Presbyterian upbringing and declared himself an "intellectual agnostic"—or had it been "agnostic intellectual"?—had protested, but his mother insisted that the human animal had a need for structure, for ritual and discipline, for the ties with the community that the church provided, and for a sense of something larger than itself.