Detective Fiction Quotes:

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

- Agatha Christie

topic: New York, Writing, Cities, Detective Work, Hercule Poirot

I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.

- Raymond Chandler

source: The Big Sleep ch. 3 (1939)

topic: Winter, Grieving, Long, Detective Fiction, Big Sleep

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

- Arthur C. Clarke

topic: Science, Political, Fiction, Detective Fiction, Detective Stories

A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no 'atmospheric' preoccupations. Such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude.

- S. S. Van Dine

source: S. S. Van Dine (2015). “Twenty Rules For Writing Detective Stories”, p.6, Booklassic

topic: Character, Successful, Issues, Deductions, Detective Fiction

I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.

- James Patterson

topic: Book, Writing, School, Exorcist, Jackals

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.

- Guillermo Cabrera Infante

topic: Writing, Mean, Fiction, Detective Fiction

I am talking about the general psychological health of the species, man. He needs the existence of mysteries. Not their solution.

- John Fowles

source: John Fowles (1968). “The Magus”, Pan

topic: Men, Psychological Health, Talking, Detective Fiction

The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

source: The Innocence of Father Brown "The Blue Cross" (1911)

topic: Artist, Creative, Criticism, Detective Fiction

It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.

- Erle Stanley Gardner

topic: Writing, Stories, Checks, Detective Fiction

There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better.

- S. S. Van Dine

source: S. S. Van Dine (2015). “Twenty Rules For Writing Detective Stories”, p.4, Booklassic

topic: Detectives, Novel, Detective Fiction

The detective story itself is in a dilemma. It is a vein which is in danger of being worked out, the demand is constant, the powers of supply variable, and the reader, with each one he absorbs, grows a little more sophisticated and harder to please, while the novelist, after each one he writes, becomes a little more exhausted.

- Cyril Connolly

topic: Writing, Novelists, Stories, Detective Fiction

Detective fiction could not have existed without Edgar Allan Poe.

- Giles Foden

source: "A one-word response to Engdahl" by Giles Foden, www.theguardian.com. October 1, 2008.

topic: Fiction, Detectives, Allan Poe, Detective Fiction

Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.

- W. H. Auden

topic: Art, Stories, Detectives, Detective Fiction

I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of.

- Dashiell Hammett

source: "Mystery writer" by Margaret Atwood, www.theguardian.com. February 15, 2002.

topic: Thinking, Literature, Influence, American Literature, Detective Fiction

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.

- Mickey Spillane

source: "Writers on writing". Book by Jon Winokur, 1986.

topic: Book, Writing, Literature, Detective Fiction, Letdowns

Reading my way all the way through Sherlock Holmes gave me a lifelong love for crime and detective fiction.

- Stanley Bing

source: Source: www.omnivoracious.com

topic: Reading, Fiction, Way, Lifelong Love, Detective Fiction

It's no secret - I love detective fiction. One of the reasons I love being in London is because I like to watch all the shows on TV. I watch them all.

- Patti Smith

topic: Secret, Watches, Fiction, Detective Fiction

Marshall Jevons is the pioneer for integrating economics and detective fiction, and The Mystery of the Invisible Hand is another fine effort in this genre.

- Tyler Cowen

topic: Hands, Invisible Hand, Effort, Detective Fiction

I've always had a great fondness for English detective fiction such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.

- Kazuo Ishiguro

topic: Fiction, Detectives, Christie, Detective Fiction

My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise.

- Sue Grafton

source: Interview with Elise Cooper, crimespreemag.com. August 21, 2015.

topic: Father, Book, Law, Detective Fiction, Criminal Law