I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.
Her eyes narrowed until they were a faint greenish glitter, like a forest pool far back in the shadow of trees.
If I had a razor, I'd cut your throat — just to see what ran out of it.
There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.
He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
The solution, once revealed, must seem to have been inevitable. At least half of all the mystery novels published violate this law.(, 1949)
Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred guy...
The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.
I went to the door and looked out. The cool night breeze was blowing peacefully down the hall. No excited neighbors hung out of doorways. A small gun had gone off and broken a pane of glass, but noise...
She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
The voice was cool, drawling, and insolent, but the eyes were something else. She looked about as hard to get as a haircut.
Leave the gun out of it. I can always hear the sound of money.
It was raining again the next morning, a slanting gray rain like a swung curtain of crystal beads. I got up feeling sluggish and tired and stood looking out of the windows, with a dark, harsh taste of...
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
I didn't ask to see you. You sent for me. I don't mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasur...
But show business has always been like that - any kind of show business. If these people didn't live intense and rather disordered lives, if their emotions didn't ride them too hard—well, they wouldn'...
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
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.
She was quite a doll. She wore a white belted raincoat, no hat, a well-cherished head of platinum hair, booties to match the raincoat, a folding plastic umbrella, a pair of blue-gray eyes that looked...
They went along a balcony that looked down over the dining room and the dance floor. The lisp of hot jazz came up to them from the lithe, swaying bodies of a high-yaller band. With the lisp of jazz ca...