Crime Novels Quotes

• The best crime novels are all based on people keeping secrets. All lying - you may think a lie is harmless, but you put them all together and there's a calamity.

  Alafair Burke

  Lying, Thinking, Keeping Secrets

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• Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.

  Agatha Christie

  Memorable, Literature, Can Do

  Agatha Christie (1984). “Hercule Poirot's casebook”, Putnam Adult

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• The best crime novels are not about how a detective works on a case; they are about how a case works on a detective.

  Michael Connelly

  Detective Work, Detectives, Cases

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• The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern.

  Ian Rankin

  Character, Trying, Elements

  "Paperback Q&A: Ian Rankin on The Impossible Dead". www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2012.

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• With the crime novels, its delightful to have protagonists I can revisit in book after book. Its like having a fictitious family.

  John Banville

  Book, Protagonists, Delightful

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• It's what's in *yourself* that makes you happy or unhappy.

  Agatha Christie

  Unhappy, Make You Happy, Miss Marple

  Agatha Christie (1960). “Murder Preferred: Including: The Patriotic Murders; A Murder is Announced; Murder in Retrospect”

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• I abhor crime novels in which the main character can behave however he or she pleases, or do things that normal people do not do, without those actions having social consequences.

  Steig Larsson

  Character, People, Normal

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• I'm a fast writer, and crime novels are easy to do. It's much harder to write a 1,000 word article, where everything has to be 100 per cent correct.

  Steig Larsson

  Writing, Easy, Articles

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• I think the "crime novel" has replaced the sociological novel of the 1930s. I think the progenitor of that tradition is James M. Cain, who in my view is the most neglected writer in American literature.

  James Lee Burke

  Thinking, Views, Cain

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• I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime novelist who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific what Tolstoy is to the Russian novel and what Beethoven is to music.

  James Ellroy

  Novelists, Fiction, Masters

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• The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you've blasted to mars in the grip of a demon who won't let you go. Read this book, savor the language-it's the last-and the most compelling word in thrillers.

  James Ellroy

  Book, Mars, Lasts

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• In everything I've written, the crime has always just been an occasion to write about other things. I don't have a picture of myself as writing crime novels. I like fairly strong narratives, but it's a way of getting a plot moving.

  Peter Temple

  Strong, Moving, Writing

  "The Book Show" with Ramona Koval, www.abc.net.au. June 18, 2006.

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• I don't really consider any of my novels 'crime' novels.

  Megan Abbott

  Crime, Novel

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• The crime novel has always been my favourite genre.

  Sara Paretsky

  Favourite, Genre, Crime

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• I like Jo Nesbo and Hakan Nesser. There are so many good books in the world. I don't want to spend time reading bad crime novels.

  Maj Sjowall

  Book, Reading, World

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• Horror and supernatural novels give you a lot of what you look for in a crime novel, just with a twist that was very fresh for me as a reader.

  Michael Koryta

  Giving, Twists, Looks

  "Born Storyteller: An Interview With Michael Koryta, Author of So Cold the River". Interview with Jason Pinter, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 8, 2010.

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• I read a lot of thrillers, especially American crime novels.

  Kate Mosse

  Crime, Thrillers, Novel

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• My first crime novel, "Wild Horses," sold at auction, and that changed my life at an ideal time.

  Brian Hodge

  Horse, Auctions, Firsts

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• It's an unusual way to write a crime novel, to have these lingering, fairly large story points, but it's something I knew I had to do if I wanted to write a sequel...but, you know, people still have to read and enjoy this book, or it's a moot point.

  Tod Goldberg

  Book, Writing, People

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The Chicago Way is a wonderful first novel. Michael Harvey has studied the masters and put his own unique touch on the crime novel. This book harkens the arrival of a major new voice.

  Michael Connelly

  Book, Unique, Voice

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• The Collector [John Fowles book] does such a good job of capturing the mindset of a capturer, and also that's become a banal trope of every second crime novel: the weirdo, fetishistic watcher/stalker/kidnapper/kidnapper of women or children.

  Emma Donoghue

  Jobs, Children, Book

  "Emma Donoghue Chats About 'Room'". The New Yorker Chat, www.newyorker.com. January 21, 2011.

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• Michael Koryta is an amazingly talented writer, and I rank The Prophet as one of the sharpest and superbly plotted crime novels I've read in my life.

  Donald Ray Pollock

  Crime, Prophet, Novel

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• I think Melbourne is by far and away the most interesting place in Australia, and I thought if I ever wrote a novel or crime novel of any kind, I had to set it here.

  Peter Temple

  Thinking, Australia, Interesting

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• Many Scandinavian writers who had made their name in literary fiction felt they wanted to have a go at the crime novel to show they could compete with the best. If Salman Rushdie had been Norwegian, he would definitely have written at least one thriller.

  Jo Nesbo

  Names, Fiction, Scandinavia

  "Jo Nesbø: 'If Salman Rushdie had been Norwegian, he'd have written a thriller'". Interview with John Crace, www.theguardian.com. October 28, 2012.

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• Ever since the '70s, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo were the godfathers of Scandinavian crime. They broke the crime novel in Scandinavia from the kiosks and into the serious bookstores.

  Jo Nesbo

  Bookstores, Serious, Broke

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