Quotes About Clues

Watching Dad figure things out was like watching an artist paint a picture. He used to say an investigation was a lot like art, just a blank canvas and a whole lot of different colors in little jars. All the clues were there, just like a painting was already in those little jars of paint. But you had to mix them together and put them on the canvas right, so it all made sense.

I say, Parker, these are funny cases, ain't they? Every line of inquiry seems to peter out. It's awfully exciting up to a point, you know, and then nothing comes of it. It's like rivers getting lost in the sand.

to tell the reader what the detective has observed and deduced – but to make the observations and deductions turn out to be incorrect, thus leading up to a carefully manufactured surprise packet in the last chapter.

No private detective looks like a private detective. That's one of the first rules of private detection. But if no private detective looks like a private detective, how does a private detective know what it is he's supposed not to look like? Seems to me there's a problem there.

DIDLING (participal vb.) The process of trying to work out who did it when reading a whodunnit, and trying to keep your options open so that when you find out you can allow yourself to think that you knew perfectly well who it was all along.

Do you think they came today?' he said. 'I do. There's mud on the floor, cigarettes and whisky on the table, fish on a plate for you and a memory of them in my mind. Hardly conclusive evidence I know, but then all evidence is circumstantial.

While dead men tell no tales, their corpses often speak volumes.

An accident is only a puzzle piece that hasn't yet found its place in the picture. A good detective collects all 'accidents,' no matter how insignificant.

Have you ever read The Hollow Man, by John Dickson Carr?

"This affair must all be unraveled from within." He [Hercule Poirot] tapped his forehead. "These little gray cells. It is 'up to them'—as you say over here."

If you are to be Hercule Poirot, you must think of everything.

It often seems to me that's all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again." "Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant.

One of us in this very room is in fact the murderer.

Unless you are good at guessing, it is not much use being a detective.

When the sea goes down, there will come from the mainland boats and men. And they will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Indian Island.

Then there are some minor points that strike me as suggestive - for instance, the position of Mrs. Hubbard's sponge bag, the name of Mrs. Armstrong's mother, the detective methods of Mr. Hardman, the suggestion of Mr. MacQueen that Ratchett himself destroyed the charred note we found, Princess Dragomiroff's Christian name, and a grease spot on a Hungarian passport.

The dog hunts rabbits. Hercule Poirot hunts murderers.

My friend, in working upon a case, one does not take into account only the things that are "mentioned". There is no reason to mention many things which may be important. Equally, there is often an excellent reason for not mentioning them.

What one does not tell to Papa Poirot he finds out.

I know that in books it is always the most unlikely person. But I never find that rule applies in real life. There it is so often the obvious that is true.

Miss Howard: Like a good detective story myself. Lots of nonsense written, though. Criminal discovered in last Chapter. Everyone dumbfounded. Real crime - you'd know at once.

Murder develops. Yes, like a photograph, isn't it?" "It's very much like photography really," said Dermot. "Quite a good comparison of yours.

It has just happened that I have found myself in the vicinity of murder rather more often than would seem normal.

Where there is murder, anything can happen.