Quotes from John Sandford

He didn't know if that was good or bad: concealed-carry people actually committed fewer felonies per year than cops did 

That's bullshit, man," Dannon said. "That whole thing is buried so deep, and the guys who buried it all have stars now. They'd never get you." "That's what I told him," Carver said. "I think he's going to do it anyway. I'm telling you, he's a crazy mean cocksucker. He's got nothing unless I talk, except the 'stan, and he'll use it to bust my balls.

He glanced at her: "Sure. You guys must be really close." She was blunt: "Close enough to get your ass fired if you're suggesting that Colles and I are sleeping together." "I wasn't suggesting that," he muttered, rapidly backing off. "Try harder not to suggest it," she said; her tone did everything but smear blood on the windshield. (Page 16)

understand you got all kinds of family stuff in there from Minnesota Sioux. Anything on Bluebird or Yellow Hand?" "I looked up Bluebird. He's just about the last of the family. A lot of Bluebirds went East and married into the Mohawks and that bunch. There are still quite a few Yellow Hands out at Crow Creek and Niobrara. Those used to be Minnesota Indians before they got run out. But I know this Yellow Hand you talked

around the sink, put the beer bottle in

I know. I'll tell you what, when you spend your life doing investigations, you become wary of coincidences. Because they happen. It's possible that there was a dirty trick, followed by two killings, at a critical moment in a political campaign, and it's all purely a coincidence that the person who most benefits had two killers standing around. I personally am not ready to believe that.

How'n the hell they find anything in there?

pulled the money bag up to the passenger seat. He reached inside the bag, pulled out a banded stack of bills. It was a half inch thick, all hundreds. He riffled the stack with his thumb, put it back in the bag, and attempted to tally the number of

Well, I thought Johnson would have told you, but somebody's snatching our dogs. A drunk at the front of the bar, who'd turned around on his barstool to watch the meeting, called, Better'n having your snatch dogged.

Alice Green was a former Secret Service agent. She was not in the loop on the shadow campaign. Taryn said, "Alice is with the car. . . . What happened?

heart-healthy reconstituted simulated free-range chicken eggs...

Not a big intellectual, he'd nevertheless spent an entire summer reading an English translation of Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust's À la recherché du temps perdu while knitting together the web of a major crack gang that spread over the Twin Cities. He couldn't read French, but the book had made him want to learn the language; he'd just never had time.

Taryn was now thirty-four. She still had those major assets—she was blond, good-looking, with interesting places in all the interesting places.

He'd made himself smile with all the rumination. He really ought to lighten up more, Lucas thought, as the last of the Corvettes went past. Hell, what are a couple more killers in a lifetime full of them? And he liked hunting, and what better day to do it than a fine blue day in the autumn of the year, with not a cloud in the heavens, when riding through a singularly beautiful tract of country, in a Porsche with the top down? Fuck a bunch of E. A. Poe. And his Raven.

AS THEY WERE ROLLING out of the Southers' driveway, the couple watching them go, Wood said, "You honest to God collect poetry? I didn't know you were a delicate little rosebud." "I'm pretty delicate," Lucas admitted. "You know, when I'm not beating somebody senseless.

She thought, Hmmm. She had an interest in the Senate, as a stepping-stone, and it was clear from early on that the main Democratic candidates would be the usual bunch of stooges, clowns, buffoons, apparatchiks, and small-town wannabees—and a witch—who couldn't have found Washington, D.C., with a Cadillac's navigation system and a Seeing Eye dog.

doing this for a long time, honey. I'd be

Lot of Irish in Mexico. The Mexican name, Obregon? It comes from O'Brien.

She sounded like a blackboard being run through a table saw.

Virgil thanked him, and as he was leaving, said, "I wouldn't necessarily recommend you invite a cop inside, when you've been smoking dope." "It's medicinal," Gates said. "Besides, does anybody really care anymore?

No," she said. "I've always been Republican policy, he's always been Democratic operations. We've worked on opposing political campaigns, of course, and we sometimes go to the same parties. I've known him for years, but we've never been . . . intimate. I don't mean that just in a sexual way, either. I mean, we've never really shared confidences.

I know Mrs. Bowden's politics aren't the same as yours, but I'm really desperate to find these people who might be trying to harm her. The people who probably killed Joe Likely and his girlfriend . . ." He took a sip and the Kool-Aid was improbably good on his tongue.

WHEN SHE WAS GONE, Lucas took out his cell phone, went online and looked up the plural of apparatus, and found that it was apparatus, or apparatuses, and not apparati. He said, "Huh," turned the phone off and thought about Johnson.

for seventy-five dollars. They were workin