Quotes from John Sandford

It's the way of the world, man. There are the worker bees, and the manager bees. The worker bees take care of the work, the manager bees take care of themselves." •

Kidd could feel an incipient hernia when he even thought about that night. . . .

FOUND BELL WOOD a hundred yards down the street, sitting on the curb. Wood looked like he'd been painted with blood, which was now deepening to a cold umber color. Lucas realized that he looked the same way, and that his fingers were sticking together from the blood smeared between them.

Osborne said. "I miss Mom, though. That didn't have to happen. The guy who killed her . . . If I knew who it was, I'd think about killing him myself." "Not what you usually want to tell a couple of cops," Jenkins said. "Now if he gets run over by a car, people are going to be looking at your front bumper." "Okay, so I'll back over him," Osborne said.

Because they're

Joe, you're thinking in slogans," Lucas said. "You don't talk to cops, you don't inform on anybody, you don't respond to threats. You've got to listen to what I'm saying. This isn't make-believe. This isn't political bullshit, or a TV show—this is a real thing.

IN A COLD DRY SPRING, before the trees bud out, the morning sun seems to shine white like a silver dime on the horizon, and the clear air over the still-fallow ground gives the prairie a particular bleakness, if your mood is already bleak.

He looked terrific. Not that any women would notice: they'd be too busy talking to each other on their fucking cell phones.

wanna lawyer.

falls, the jumble of trees stretched the two hours into three.

walked back to Wood with a Wiener schnitzel on a stick and two Diet Cokes. He sat on the curb next to Wood, handed him a Diet Coke, and said, "For your own good." "Fuck you very much," Wood said. "But I suppose you're right.

Ever notice how dumb luck seems to follow smart people around?

If you think that haircut makes you look like a Ranger, it doesn't. It makes you look like a fuckin' whorehouse doorknob." "Yeah, well, fuck you, too," the younger cop said.

Oh, bullshit," Jenkins said. "You do it because you like it, because you get that feeling in your balls like you're in a falling elevator, and you like it. We all like it. We get all grim and warriored-up about it, but the bottom line is, we like it." "That's somewhat true," Shrake admitted. "That's why Davenport does it: it's better than money," Jenkins said. "You guys bum me out sometimes," Virgil said.

An agent named Dillon Koch picked them up at the Staten Island terminal in a Chevy Equinox, a small gray SUV picked, Koch said, for its anonymity. "You look at it, and you don't see it," he said.

Lucas nodded at him and said to the younger cop, "If you think that haircut makes you look like a Ranger, it doesn't. It makes you look like a fuckin' whorehouse doorknob." "Yeah, well, fuck you, too," the younger cop said. The older cop said, "Whorehouse doorknob? That's good. I'll have to remember that.

Because it's gorgeous," she said. A gold watch dangled from her fingers. "It's a Patek Philippe, from 1918. I've looked it up—it could be worth anything up to a quarter million.

That seems reasonable," Lucas said, because it was.

So they were here sometime before ten, but we don't know how long before, and they were gone before eleven," Robertson said. Robertson was sartorially distinct from his partner, wearing a blue-striped Façonnable long-sleeved dress shirt, dark blue slender jeans with the cuffs rolled up a half inch, and tan lace-up shoes; Lucas envied him the shoes. "We have a call on Likely's phone, to Baker, at nine o'clock, so he was alive then.

computer chips.

Having some guy shine his flashlight up my asshole isn't gonna improve my addition," he said.

He glanced at his watch: three twenty-seven in the afternoon, more or less. With a Rolex, he'd discovered, more or less had to be good enough.

copy of an aerial photo from the engineering department.

cold as Martin.