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Detectives Quotes

“All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts.”

FactsEvidenceInstinctIntelligenceInsightIntuitionSuperiorityDetectivesCriminal JusticeSherlock HolmesTheoriesJuriesCrime Solving
Book:The Adventure of the Norwood Builder - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story
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“All people, whether Aspie or neuro-typical are predisposed by their society to make guesses, jump to conclusions and then seek to defend those conclusions, regardless of logic or changing circumstance. This is sloppy, illogical thinking which may not hinder your life too much, under normal circumstances. But if you want to be a great detective, then such thinking will absolutely ruin your chances.”

LogicReasoningAutismDetectivesGuessingDetectiveAutism SpectrumAspergersAspergers SyndromeGuessDeductionAsperger
Book:Trueman Bradley - The Next Great Detective
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“His thick eyebrows drew together in a familiar frown. The blood pooled around the half-body was a bright cherry red. He bent to look closer at the woman's face. It was flushed pink, even following this horrible death. Norris's reaction was recorded by a crime writer and would later become part of his often theatrical legend. He walked over to the waiting detectives and announced, 'Boys, you can't hold this man for murder.”

BloodMurderDetectivesDeborah BlumNorrisCrime Writer
Book:The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
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“Detective Inspector Eccles sighed. He may ordinarily have met his sigh with the question of why the newly appointed Superintendent Dickinson was turning up to this late hour crime scene, he may also ordinarily question why his superior officer was dressed as Julius Caesar, in full tunic and green leafy wreath, yet ever since the new and youngest-ever-appointed superintendent had arrived at the Met it had been all too clear he was an officer who didn’t quite do things by the eBook.”

ComedyHumourMurderDetectivesEbooksPomposityCrime Scenes
Author:Tom Conrad
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“He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back it was to BLACK MASK and the other detective magazines with a curious and terrible fiction which had never been seen before in the genre markets; Hart Crane and certainly Hemingway were writing of people on the edge of their emotions and their possibility but the genre mystery markets were filled with characters whose pain was circumstantial, whose resolution was through action; Woolrich's gallery was of those so damaged that their lives could only be seen as vast anticlimax to central and terrible events which had occurred long before the incidents of the story. Hammett and his great disciple, Chandler, had verged toward this more than a little, there is no minimizing the depth of their contribution to the mystery and to literature but Hammett and Chandler were still working within the devices of their category: detectives confronted problems and solved (or more commonly failed to solve) them, evil was generalized but had at least specific manifestations: Woolrich went far out on the edge. His characters killed, were killed, witnessed murder, attempted to solve it but the events were peripheral to the central circumstances. What I am trying to say, perhaps, is that Hammett and Chandler wrote of death but the novels and short stories of Woolrich *were* death. In all of its delicacy and grace, its fragile beauty as well as its finality. Most of his plots made no objective sense. Woolrich was writing at the cutting edge of his time. Twenty years later his vision would attract a Truffaut whose own influences had been the philosophy of Sartre, the French nouvelle vague, the central conception that nothing really mattered. At all. But the suffering. Ah, that mattered; that mattered quite a bit.”

MysteryCrimeDetectivesCrime FictionNoirDetectiveCrime ThrillerMystery SuspenseMystery ThrillerNoir FictionDetective StoriesErnest HemingwayDetective FictionDetective NovelF Scott FitzgeraldSartreCornell WoolrichJean Paul SartreDetective NovelsHart CraneRaymond ChandlerDashiel HammettDetective NoirMystery And Crime DramaFrancois TruffautFrançois TruffautTruffaut
Book:The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich
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“To catch the bad guys, you've got to think like a bad guy - and that's why all the best detectives have a dark side...”

CrimePoliceBritishLondonDetectivesPolice OfficerCrime FictionDetectiveCrime ThrillerPolice OfficersDetective StoriesDetective FictionDetective NovelBased On Real EventsBased On A True StoryHard BoiledLondon CityBritish CrimeBritish DetectivesCrime QuotesDetective QuotesHard Boiled DetectiveTrue DetectiveDetective Noir CrimeBritish Detective FictionCrime QuoteDetective NoirDetective StoryBased On True StoriesBritish Crime AuthorBritish DetectiveBritish Detective ThrillerBritish Thriller WritersBritish ThrillersCrime Fiction Authors
Book:The Theseus Paradox
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“(About "From Hell") The idea was to do a documentary comic about a murder. I concluded that there was a way of approaching the [Ripper] murders in a completely different way. I changed the emphasis from 'whodunit' to 'what happened'. I'd seen advertisements for Douglas Adams' book "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency". A holistic detective? You wouldn't just have to solve the crime, you'd have to solve the entire world that that crime happened in. That was the twist that I needed.”

DetectivesCrime Solving
Author:Alan Moore
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“Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional -- to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. 'The detective story,' observed Raymond Chandler in 1949, 'is a tragedy with a happy ending.' A storybook detective starts by confronting us with a murder and ends by absolving us of it. He clears us of guilt. He relieves us of uncertainty. He removes us from the presence of death.”

CrimeDetectivesMysteriesDetective StoriesAbsolutionInvestigations
Book:The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
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“Once outside, the detectives advanced up an escalator and to a floor with two elevators. One was labeled for the staff, and the other for guests. In the corner was a plain grey door which led up a staircase. “Monsieur Leor…” Jean began. “Are you up for a challenge?” “You want to run up the staircase.” Leor concluded, plainly. “Like schoolboys?” “Ouais, monsieur,” Jean replied, with a silly grin. “You can consider it your preliminary training, if that helps your dignity.”

HumorRaceStairsDetectivesFrenchGoofy
Book:Beyond Chivalry
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“What I find predictable is crazy people's ability to predict that unpredictable people can be predicted by their consistent unpredictable behavior, thus making all crazy people predictable when the world says they are unpredictable. Therefore, I must be “right” because I can predict crazy because I have been trained in the unpredictable nature of consistent craziness because I am crazy.”

HumorFearLaughingComedyAnxietyDiscriminationSarcasmBiasUnpredictableDetectivesPredictableCrazy PeopleFunny PeopleTarot CardsControl IssuesStereotypingWackadooCrystal BallsProfilersPscyho BabbleStereoytype
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialized to be tackled by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighborly Disputes (SO-30) and going onto Literary Detectives (SO-27) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-20 was restricted information, although it was common knowledge that the ChronoGuard was SO-12 and Antiterrorism SO-9. It is rumored that SO-1 was the department that polices the SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone's guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-military or ex-police and slightly unbalanced. 'If you want to be a SpecOp,' the saying goes, 'act kinda weird...”

ArtMilitaryCrimePoliceUnusualTime TravelWeirdDetectivesLiteraryRestrictedAntiterrorismSpecialized
Book:The Eyre Affair
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“Pero no fue hasta que la joven morena se levantó y observó el espejo, esperando que estuviera intacto, ella vio que todo estaba perfecto; sin embargo, se puso a ver algo detenidamente y resulta que observó algo detrás de ella, ya que el espejo daba directo a la cama y la vio, a Anne. Rápidamente volteó y vio la peor escena de su vida. —¡Anne! —. Vanessa gritó, se sintió sofocada y repentinamente corrió hacia su bolso y tomó su teléfono celular para llamar a la ambulancia como también a la policía,”

DetectivesMisterioNovela NegraErótica
Book:Detectives Loren & Dante: Asesinato de Anne
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“Thus, by science I mean, first of all, a worldview giving primacy to reason and observation and a methodology aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of the natural and social world. This methodology is characterized, above all else, by the critical spirit: namely, the commitment to the incessant testing of assertions through observations and/or experiments — the more stringent the tests, the better — and to revising or discarding those theories that fail the test. One corollary of the critical spirit is fallibilism: namely, the understanding that all our empirical knowledge is tentative, incomplete and open to revision in the light of new evidence or cogent new arguments (though, of course, the most well-established aspects of scientific knowledge are unlikely to be discarded entirely). . . . I stress that my use of the term 'science' is not limited to the natural sciences, but includes investigations aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of factual matters relating to any aspect of the world by using rational empirical methods analogous to those employed in the natural sciences. (Please note the limitation to questions of fact. I intentionally exclude from my purview questions of ethics, aesthetics, ultimate purpose, and so forth.) Thus, 'science' (as I use the term) is routinely practiced not only by physicists, chemists and biologists, but also by historians, detectives, plumbers and indeed all human beings in (some aspects of) our daily lives. (Of course, the fact that we all practice science from time to time does not mean that we all practice it equally well, or that we practice it equally well in all areas of our lives.)”

LifeScienceKnowledgePracticeArgumentCriticalPhysicsObservationBiologyChemistryInvestigationTestingWorldviewDetectivesMethodologyNatural ScienceDefinitionExperimentHistoriansEmpiricalCogencyFallibilism
Author:Alan Sokal
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“Virtue is honorably rewarded, and the wrongdoers are suitably punished. We tend to strive for the improvement of our nature, with what you call the moral lessons that are woven into our hearts. If that were true, would there be any wrongdoers, such as myself? Would you say that perhaps I am an exception to your virtuous belief in man, only that I have scathed myself amidst the growth of those morals?” (Joseph Vladamir) “Fancy language aside, in my eyes, you are nothing but an utter psychopath.” (Darwin) “I am only pointing out the special treatment I am receiving for being a prisoner. All of this security, just for me! My previous guards would slumber with their handguns resting on their cigar-burned desks. Such fools trusting me enough to dream under my eye, you are a much smarter fool.” {The Latent Identities Of Darwin}”

MysteryDetectivesThe Latent Identities Of Darwin
Author:FinPoet
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“He was in conflict with himself. There was no enjoyment in the thought that he had escaped a great danger, and in the midst of his uneasy reflections he had a sudden breathless conviction that she made him feel old because he loved her. Then he felt a hatred of himself, gathering into one mighty heap all the fierce and bitter hatred he had cherished for others and pouring it out on himself.”

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Book:Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler
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