Captain Crawford didn't like the idea of any kind of murder, but he went at it patiently and honestly and with none of the stupidity and bombast and rubber-hose techniques that Los Angeles crime fiction writers had led me to expect. I'd gotten the impression that unless a gifted amateur in love with the lady got himself almost beaten to a pulp and practically inside the lethal gas chamber before he unmasked the venal and brutalized constabulary, any innocent bystander they could get their hands on was a gone duck.

bitterness hardly cares what food it eats.

Nobody's ever decided what success is, out here.

I suppose it's part of being a good politician to be able to spot the most important men in any group without outside assistance.

The thing about George Barrol is that he's always putting his own and other people's feet into things that had best be left quite free of feet.

Men ruin cars. That's one of the things every woman knows.

More people have been ruined by their upright friends than ever have been by their enemies!