Female Private Detective Quotes

A selection of quotes from The Night of Harrison Monk's Death (Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection: 1)
"Is this one of the more unusual cases of safe-breaking you've been asked to investigate, Mrs Hetherington?"
"Remember your private detective wants to be able to sleep soundly at night and in their own bed, not one supplied as her Majesty's pleasure."
"It seems to be an open and shut case doesn't it? But it's not you know? How do you know if anything is what it seems?"
"But where is Cheung kin?"
"When I first set eyes on your father, he was spying on a man from between two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica."
"I don't think I need say more." "On the contrary, if you want me to have any idea what you're talking about, I think you do."
"Why don't you report it to the police?" "Because I stole it in the first place didn't I?"
"It's something of a mystery, I admit."
"Vanished into thin air!"
"You sound so sensible Mrs Hetherington. Please help us get to the bottom of this."
Ah, thought Jane – the old story.
"No body was found?"
"Shall I put the kettle on?" "Only if you fill it with whiskey."
"The course of true love didn't run smoothly for me either, you know."
"Life has its tragedies for sure."
"… What do I want? I want money that's what I want. I want money."
She was even more horrified by the words she heard next.
Callum MacCallum knew what it was like to be an outsider. ~ Nina Jon

Tailing someone is like maintaining a relationship: you keep at it until they give you the slip, or until they confirm everything you suspect them of. ~ Mark Crutchfield

You're a cop aren't you?
A private detective.
Isn't that the same thing?
The cops guarantee order. All I do is uncover disorder. ~ Manuel Vazquez Montalban

They tell us that women make loud noises during sex "from the Lower East Side to the upper reaches of the Amazon", overlooking the fact that as far as the Amazonian tribes are concerned, signs of female sexual enjoyment are sometimes discouraged and the existence of the female orgasm is often not even recognized. In all of these tribes where we have had the information, female sexual pleasure is either a non-issue, discouraged, or sex is as private and as quiet as possible. ~ Lynn Saxon

Georgia gulped as the entire doorway suddenly filled with a man she didn't recognize. She'd been expecting Jesper MacMillian.
This was definitely not Jesper MacMillian.
This man had a rich black complexion. His head was bald- whether by nature or design, she couldn't be sure. Tiny studs flashed in his ears. He wore a beautiful black suit, painstakingly tailored to fit his massive shoulders. Dark tattoos curled just above his pressed white collar, and down below the edges of his cuffs.
His face was neither kind nor unkind. He studied her with vague disinterest, his eyes quiet and guarded beneath solid brows. ~ Laura Oliva

If you two are starting a detective agency, I want in," said Selene, adjusting her ball cap.

"Well, duh," said Eli, beaming at her.

"And we're going to need a name," Selene said. "Something good and catchy."

"You're right." Eli scratched his chin. "How about the Arkwell Detective Agency. The A.D.A."

Selene wrinkled her nose. "Sounds too much like a chemical or something."

"What about Booker and Associates?"

I rolled my eyes. "It's not all about you, you know?"

Eli grinned. "Says who?"

"I think we should call it Selene Investigations."

"No, Nightmare Investigations."

"Dreamer Investigations."

"The Dream Team."

"How about Magic Eyes? You know, like private eyes, only for magic."

"Corny much? ~ Mindee Arnett

It wasn't every day a witch came to see him.
Darius deCompostela gave up on the paperwork he'd been trying to fill out and leaned back in his chair. Semantics. Technically, Georgia Clare hadn't come to see him. She'd come to see MacMillian. Most people did, often with barely a sideways glance in his direction. Usually, that chafed.
Not this time. For one thing, her reluctance to speak with him didn't seem to have anything to do with, well, him.
For another thing, he didn't do witches. ~ Laura Oliva

He was too young to deserve a weight of the world sign like the one he expelled. ~ Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins

Unlike her closest primate cousins, the standard human female doesn't come equipped with private parts that swell up to double their normal size and turn bright red when she is about to ovulate. In ~ Christopher Ryan

Female Virtues are of a Domestick turn. The Family is the proper Province for Private Women to Shine in. If they must be showing their Zeal for the Publick, let it not be against those who are perhaps of the same Family, or at least of the same Religion or Nation, but against those who are the open, professed, undoubted Enemies of their Faith, Liberty, and Country. ~ Joseph Addison

I reviewed in thought the modern era of raps and apparitions, beginning with the knockings of 1848, at the hamlet of Hydesville, N.Y., and ending with grotesque phenomena at Cambridge, Mass.; I evoked the anklebones and other anatomical castanets of the Fox sisters (as described by the sages of the University of Buffalo ); the mysteriously uniform type of delicate adolescent in bleak Epworth or Tedworth, radiating the same disturbances as in old Peru; solemn Victorian orgies with roses falling and accordions floating to the strains of sacred music; professional imposters regurgitating moist cheesecloth; Mr. Duncan, a lady medium's dignified husband, who, when asked if he would submit to a search, excused himself on the ground of soiled underwear; old Alfred Russel Wallace, the naive naturalist, refusing to believe that the white form with bare feet and unperforated earlobes before him, at a private pandemonium in Boston, could be prim Miss Cook whom he had just seen asleep, in her curtained corner, all dressed in black, wearing laced-up boots and earrings; two other investigators, small, puny, but reasonably intelligent and active men, closely clinging with arms and legs about Eusapia, a large, plump elderly female reeking of garlic, who still managed to fool them; and the skeptical and embarrassed magician, instructed by charming young Margery's "control" not to get lost in the bathrobe's lining but to follow up the left stocking until he reached the bare thigh - upon the wa ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The critical scene of the mystery is when the detective enters. The action shifts to Sherlock's sitting room. The little Belgian man with the waxed moustache appears in the lobby of the grand hotel. The gentle old woman with a bag of knitting comes to visit her niece when the poison pen letters start going around the village. The private detective comes back to the office after a night of drinking and finds the woman with the cigarette and the veiled hat this is when things will change. ~ Maureen Johnson

I've actually published two compilations, if only barely. Hire a private detective and possibly you'll be able to locate them. One was called 'Violent Screen,' and the other 'Now Playing at the Valencia.' Bantam and Simon and Schuster. ~ Stephen Hunter

She picked up the phone and dialed her partner. Several seconds later, she heard a deep husky voice at the other end. It was a recording.
"Rick Bonito here! Private investigator for the Moore Detective Agency! Leave a message, please."
"Hey, Rick!" said Amelia. "I've got an assignment for you that needs your expertise. Breaking and entering! Give me a call."
Amelia smiled after hanging up the phone. With that kind of message, she should be getting a return call soon. ~ Linda Weaver Clarke

The word "idiot" comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: men are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature. ~ Rebecca West

Flambeau, once the most famous criminal in France and later a very private detective in England, had long retired from both professions. Some say a career of crime had left him with too many scruples for a career of detection. Anyhow, after a life of romantic escapes and tricks of evasion, he had ended at what some might consider an appropriate address; a castle in Spain. [ ... ] Flambeau had casually and almost abruptly fallen in love with a Spanish lady, married and brought up a large family on a Spanish estate, without displaying any apparent desire to stray again beyond its borders. ~ G.K. Chesterton

It all came back to something I'd figured out once about the detective business. There were two ways to go along: underground or on top. I never found out which was best. Underground you had the element of surprise on your side, but it was harder to move around. On top you went everywhere, taking cracks at everybody, and everybody taking cracks at you. You had to be tough to play it that way. Well, I was tough. ~ Jonathan Latimer

All the material is fictional and develops its own eight and a half private, coelesced journeys, where, perhaps not unexpectedly, the females can run faster than the men and trade their freedoms by exhausting the male sexual fantasies and replacing them by some of their own. ~ Peter Greenaway

The room smells of lemon oil, heavy cloth, fading daffodils, the leftover smells of cooking that have made their way from the kitchen or the dining room, and of Serena Joy's perfume: Lily of the Valley. Perfume is a luxury, she must have some private source. I breathe it in, thinking I should appreciate it. It's the scent of pre-pubescent girls, of the gifts young children used to give their mothers, for Mother's Day; the smell of white cotton socks and white cotton petticoats, of dusting powder, of the innocence of female flesh not yet given over to hairiness and blood. It makes me feel slightly ill, as it I'm in a closed car on a hot muggy day with an older woman wearing too much face powder. This is what the sitting room is like, despite its elegance. ~ Margaret Atwood

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars. ~ Raymond Chandler

Because sometimes it's better to believe in the impossible. To believe you are a secret agent or a private detective or a superhero and not just a kid with freckled cheeks and gangly arms who is too clumsy to leap a tipped-over garbage can in a single bound.
Until you are lying in the middle of the sidewalk, with a throbbing ankle and bloody chin, wishing you hadn't even tried. ~ John David Anderson

Injustice, large and small, was like sour, moldy bread. Consumed often enough, it brought on hunger for the meat of revenge. ~ B.V. Lawson

I thought it was time for a tough, smart, likable female private investigator, and that's how VI came to life. ~ Sara Paretsky

Two dead men changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I'd never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue. The first was Pete Wolinsky, an unscrupulous private detective I'd met years before through Byrd-Shine Investigations, where I'd served my apprenticeship. I worked for Ben Byrd and Morley Shine for three years, amassing the six thousand hours I needed for my license. The two were old-school private eyes, hard-working, tireless, and inventive. While Ben and Morley did business with Pete on occasion, they didn't think much of him. He was morally shabby, disorganized, and irresponsible with money. ~ Sue Grafton

It was a dark, dismal afternoon, like they all seem to be
these days, when I got this call. I could hear the rain
battering the windowpane of my office when the phone rang. ~ C.S. Woolley

A woman could do a lot of crazy things for a pair of fine-looking dimples. ~ Amy Andrews

Although my understanding of exactly how much trouble I was in grew more specific over time, as a child I surely understood enough about my condition to know it was something I'd better keep private. By intuition I was certain that the thing I knew to be true was something others would find both impossible and hilarious. My conviction, by the way, had nothing to do with a desire to be feminine, but it had everything to do with being female. Which is an odd believe for a person born male. It certainly had nothing to do with whether I was attracted to girls or boys. This last point was the one that, years later, would most frequently elude people, including the overeducated smarty-pants who constituted much of my inner circle. But being gay or lesbian is about sexual orientation. Being transgedered is about identity. ~ Jennifer Finney Boylan

Eli Hofstadter, Private Detective and Investigative services. I find ~ Callie Hart

Dreema and you disagree. She cottons to Richmond, but you can't be weaned off Pelham. So I offer you a fair middle ground: relocate to northern Virginia. She transfers to the state morgue on Braddock Road, and you get to stay near your old beat. ~ Ed Lynskey

The simple action of pulling her body against his was strangely satisfying, like a puzzle piece snapping neatly into place. She gave a low cry, automatically clutching at his arm. The loose lock of fine blond hair blew across Nick's face, and the fresh, faintly salty fragrance of female skin rose to his nostrils. The scent made his mouth water. Nick was startled by his instant reaction to her- he had never experienced such a visceral response to a woman. He wanted to leap from the wall and carry her off like one of the wolves that had once roamed the medieval forests, and find some place to devour his prey in private. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Even as I was writing 'Empire State,' I knew there were more adventures for the main character, private detective Rad Bradley, to have. I also knew that the world was far larger than what I'd presented in book one. ~ Adam Christopher

Matthew kept hinting that Strike was somehow a fake. He seemed to feel that being a private detective was a far-fetched job, like astronaut or lion tamer; that real people did not do such things. ~ Robert Galbraith

No visible scars. Hair dark brown, some gray. Eyes brown. Height six feet, one half inch. Weight about one ninety. Name Philip Marlowe. Occupation private detective. ~ Raymond Chandler

Private courts, Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes Thrilled by some female vendor's scream, belike The very shrillest of all London cries, May then entangle our impatient steps; Conducted through those labyrinths, unawares, To privileged regions and inviolate, Where from their airy lodges studious lawyers Look out on waters, walks, and gardens green. ~ William Wordsworth

I came to believe that being a private detective was the work I was meant to do. ~ Shirley Jackson

MacMillian steepled his fingers on the head of his cane. Anticipation rose in his chest. Lena and Cyrus Alan might have an advantage over him when it came to hunting ghosts, but this was where he excelled. This part of the game was all about patterns. He saw patterns. Always had. ~ Laura Oliva

Hidden in a toolbox, in the rafters of his four-car garage, was an envelope full of pictures taken by a private detective...They were pictures of a scrawny, boyish looking nine year old with a wide mouth and a tangle of brown hair...Her eyes were oblong and deep set, their color hidden from the camera by the slant of the sun. The angles and planes of her face were oddly beautiful just then, in that moment, frozen on Kodak paper. A hint of the woman she would someday become. ~ Shirley A. Martin