Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.

While ye sleep in my arms, I can say things to ye that would be daft and silly waking, and your dreams will know the truth of them.

He splayed a hand out over the photographs, trembling fingers not quite touching the shiny surface, and then he turned and leaned toward me, slowly, with the improbable grace of a tall tree falling. He buried his face in my shoulder and went very quietly and thoroughly to pieces.

Really rather fascinating, you know,' he confided, and I recognized, with an internal sigh, the song of the scholar, as identifying a sound as the terr-whit! of a thrush.

He's a man...and that's no small thing to be.

It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.

When God closes a door, he opens a window. Yeah. The problem was that this particular window opened off the tenth story, and he wasn't so sure God supplied parachutes.