Mrs. Zuppa was coming in from bingo just as I was leaving the building. "Looks like you're going to work," she said, leaning heavily on her cane. "What are you packin'?" "A thirty-eight." "I like a nine-millimeter myself." "A nine's good." "Easier to use a semiautomatic after you've had hip replacement and you walk with a cane," she said. One of those useful pieces of information to file away and resurrect when I turn eighty-three.

You're a magnet for mess. I've never seen anything like it. Lula to Stephanie

He [Ranger] peeled my [Stephanie] clothes off and wrangled me into bed. And then suddenly he was inside me. He once told me that time spent with him would ruin me for all other men. When he said it, I thought it was an outrageous threat. I no longer though it outrageous.

Life is about survival of the fittest, and Jersey is producing the master race.

I don't need handcuffs to enslave a woman.

He squinted at me. "What are you wearing? Is that some new form of birth control?

The 'Barnaby' books were always intended to be graphic novels.