...good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport - like base-jumping or crocodile-wrestling.

The general public have a warped view of the speed at which an investigation proceeds. They like to imagine tense conversations going on behind the venetian blinds and unshaven, but ruggedly handsome, detectives working themselves with single-minded devotion into the bottle and marital breakdown. The truth is that at the end of the day, unless you've generated some sort of lead, you go home and get on with the important things in life - like drinking and sleeping, and if you're lucky, a relationship with the gender and sexual orientation of your choice.

When you're a boy your life can be measured out as a series of uncomfortable conversations reluctantly initiated by adults in an effort to tell you things that you either already know or really don't want to know.

The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn't set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper.

On the plus side, there were no rioters in sight but on the minus side this was probably because everywhere I looked was on fire.

Landscaping is the great cardinal sin of modern architecture. It's not your garden, it's not a park - it's a formless patch of grass, shrubbery and the occasional tree that exists purely to stop the original developer's plans from looking like a howling concrete wilderness.

You put a spell on the dog," I said as we left the house. "Just a small one," said Nightingale. "So magic is real," I said. "Which makes you a...what?" "A wizard." "Like Harry Potter?" Nightingale sighed. "No," he said. "Not like Harry Potter." "In what way?" "I'm not a fictional character," said Nightingale.