But suspense presupposes uncertainty. No matter how nightmarish the situation, real suspense is impossible when we know in advance that the protagonist will prevail (as we would if Woolrich had used s...
Bina, thank you. Bina, listen, this guy. His name wasn't Lasker. This guy-'She puts a hand to his mouth. She has not touched him in three years. It probably would be too much to say that he feels the...
We don’t know when the first star exploded, or when the sun caught on fire. We don’t know when the sun will stop burning and turn cold and dark, though we know it will.In between the fire and the cold...
The rain fell like dead bullets.
When you're reading a good noir, the shocks and twists have a way of feeling deja vu-like, as if you saw them coming, but hoped the characters would take a left turn... not answer the phone, not sleep...
And then, with a shock like high-voltage coursing through me, the phone beside me started pealing thinly.I just stood there and stared at it, blood draining from my face. A call to a tollbooth? It mus...
I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.
One of the crazies moved into the cone of light beneath a streetlight. It was a black man, high-stepping and making jerking movements with his arms. He made a crisp turn and began moving back into the...
[after Sammy struggles to unhook Stilton's bra]She rolled onto her face to give him a good shot at the hook in the back. Free my people!I will. I am the Harriet Tubman of your breasts.
You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastin...
Winter was gray and mean upon the city and every night was a package of cold bleak hours, like the hours in a cell that had no door.
When a child disappears, the space she’d occupied is immediately filled with dozens of people. And these people—relatives, friends, police officers, reporters from both TV and print—create a lot of en...
So that's the way you scientific detectives work. My god! for a fat, middle-aged, hard-boiled, pig-headed guy, you've got the vaguest way of doing things I ever heard of.
The Filipino houseboy was conscious now
The struggle doesn't last long; it's too unequal. Their momentary surprise overcome, they close in on him. The well-directed slice of a gun-butt slackens the good arm; it's easy to pry the disabled on...
Evans made himself their spokesman. Charlie and Joe, he offered. Remember us? We brought a friend back with us this time. Girls evidently didn't count in this little subdivision of the underworld; a m...
I decided to coin the term 'cosy crime noir' for Brighton Belle. That is 'cosy crime' for today's sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it.
Downtown, a dress for Meg- I do it every time I kill a man.
It's time to end the brain drain and move to brain gain. It's time for a great mind of Nigeria to return home. You're the mind we need, Doctor.
The dark clouds make the black sea. (Les nuages noirs - Font la mer noire)
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