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

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.

It's all right to be disillusioned, but you can't be disillusioning.

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.

...he had a fascinating technique of gnawing his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, as if his teeth were equipped with trolley tracks, and suddenly grabbing it out and gesticulating wit it before he jammed it back.

A city where the Capitol Dome, perforated like a kitchen colander, is the symbol of how secrets are kept.

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