When innocent people find themselves in situations that require the presence and protection of people like me, their reaction more often than not is as much bewilderment as fear. Mortality is tough to...
The office, high above downtown Manhattan, looked out over Jersey. The crap in the air made the sunset absolutely beautiful.
Pulaski said, Even psycho killers need to do home repairs. Probably it’s not related to the case.
Playing chess or Go or Tigris and Euphrates—a very good game, by the way—I can watch people as they choose their strategy and note how they respond to something I’ve done. Even
Our SUV and four other cars accelerated fast and skidded up over the grass on Professor Peter Yu’s property, tearing up the lawn and destroying shrubs. I’m told that this dramatic entrance, which you’...
My opponent . . . what is he going to do? In game theory analysis the followers of eighteenth-century statistician Thomas Bayes hold that the world is made up of constantly changing knowledge, and in...
In a matter-of-fact voice, she said to me, Have you found out anything more than that? She glanced toward the documents, which said nothing directly about her job. Only that you were with the Sickle p...
I needed somebody without any preconceived ideas. But I also needed somebody with a mind of her own. The contradictory qualities we seek in that elusive perfect lover. Strength and vulnerability, in e...
His rules were unencumbered by my constraints—the Constitution and the laws promulgated thereunder. Still,
He believed there was nothing essentially unAmerican about greed or lust—hey, those qualities were encouraged everywhere from Wall Street to Capitol Hill.
Every case I worked is closed. All the principals were either abducted and resettled . . . or zeroed, she said, using a verb that I’d heard from time to time if my principal was in a similar line of w...
Donald E. Westlake It’s an accepted fact that Donald E. Westlake has excelled at every single sub-genre the mystery field has to offer—humorous books (Scared Monster); terrifying books (The Ax, about...
Calm, Corte. Whatever happens you have to stay calm. When you look into your opponent’s face, when you talk to him, it should be like you’re discussing cornflakes. Never more emotional than that. . . ...
Already sweating though it was just nine in the morning, Amelia Sachs pushed through a stand of tall grass. She was walking the strip search—what the Crime Scene people called it—an S-shaped pattern....
The recent fascination, I think, reflects the shift in approach by law enforcement officials to embrace technology as wholeheartedly as the rest of the world.
Eager’ and ‘anxious’ aren’t the same, or how ‘disinterested’ doesn’t mean ‘uninterested.
Yield and you need not break. Bent, you can straighten. Emptied, you can hold. Torn, you can mend.
We have years to converse with someone, to blurt and rant, to explain our desires and anger and regrets - and oh how we squander those moments.
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. —LOUIS-HECTOR BERLIOZ
The sky was overcast and the scenery was probably what it had been for dozens of years: bungalow farmhouses, shacks, trailers and motor vehicles in terminal condition but still functioning if the nurs...