Quotes About Detective

The subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket

No visible scars. Hair dark brown, some gray. Eyes brown. Height six feet, one half inch. Weight about one ninety. Name Philip Marlowe. Occupation private detective.

The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don't play at it.

The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady. I don't play at it.

And there are still a number of people around who say that Hammett didn't write detective stories at all-merely hard-boiled chronicles of mean streets with a perfunctory mystery element dropped in like the olive in a martini. (The Simple Art of Murder)

Don't kid yourself. You're a dirty low-down detective. Kiss me.

I called him up from a phone booth. The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest.

It was one of the mixed blocks over on Central Avenue, the blocks that are not yet all Negro. I had just come out of a three-chair barber shop where an agency thought a relief barber named Dimitrios Aleidis might be working. It was a small matter. His wife said she was willing to spend a little money to have him come home.

I'm not Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance. I don't expect to go over ground the police have covered and pick up a broken pen point and build a case from it. If you think there is anybody in the detective business making a living doing that sort of thing, you don't know much about cops.

You can't tell anything by my voice. I'm a detective. Heard from him how?

him." I said: "Nerts! You seem to forget I know why Lou was killed." Beasley sat up in his chair and moved his right hand

mat. A case of false teeth hung on the mustard-colored wall like a fuse box in a screen porch.

You're as cold-blooded a beast as I ever met, Marlowe. Or can I call you Phil?" "Sure." "You can call me Vivian." "Thanks, Mrs. Regan." "Oh, go to hell, Marlowe." She went on out and didn't look back.

then Malloy took the gun away from whoever did it.

The main hallway looked just the same. The portrait over the mantel had the same hot black eyes and the knight in the stained-glass window still wasn't getting anywhere untying the naked damsel from the tree.

And by the way, Sherlock Holmes is Jewish. He changed his name. I'm surprised you nerver guessed it. (p. 248)

McLaughlin is a lean, dark man who looks a little like the TV version of Boston Blackie.

He picked one at random, a luridly violent far-future crime novel about a detective who could seemingly exchange bodies at will, but the subject matter was alien to him and his attention drifted. It all seemed very far-fetched.

The plot thickens," he said, and wished he hadn't said that because it sounded like something from a bad detective novel. "I think we have a suspect." That didn't sound much better. "My house has just exploded, by the way." At least that was novel.

What was Dr. Mera's motive for murder? I don't need to tell that to a writer of detective novels such as yourself. You know well enough yourself that even without a motive, a murderer lives to kill.

See you in the funny papers.' Johnny Eager From all Johnny Eager - Private Eye books Johnny's favorite saying

Well, Sir, we do like to find out who kills people and why.

Well," he said, "it's a very circumstantial case. There's the thumbprint,

The vibration of his cell phone broke his reverie. "Doucette," he answered. "Meet me at the Lamothe House," Sassy replied. "Sassy, I told you I'm not that kind of girl." "Very funny, Mr. Smart Ass. Looks like we have another body." "I'm almost there," Michel said quickly, then hung up.