It took my breath away, that evening. If you've ever dreamed that you walked into your best-loved book or film or TV program, then maybe you've got some idea how it felt: things coming alive around you, strange and new and utterly familiar at the same time; the catch in your heartbeat as you move through the rooms that had such a vivid untouchable life in your mind, as your feet actually touch the carpet, as you breathe the air; the odd, secret glow of warmth as these people you've been watching for so long, from so far away, open their circle and sweep you into it.

Some people should never meet.

My memories of them had rubbed thin with overuse, worn to frail color transparencies flickering on the walls of my mind...

What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception.

I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect.

When you're too close to people, when you spend too much time with them and love them too dearly, sometimes you can't see them

Ireland is such a young society. The British were the ruling class up until they left about a hundred years ago, and we've been trying to work out what our class hierarchy is ever since.