As you walked down the hallway you were likely to be tripped, spat at, cursed, and otherwise maltreated, particularly by those children whose only mental deficiency was that they’d been overindulged, and whose parents clearly could and should have saved themselves the trip to Kreizler’s office.

Inevitably, I became distracted by tales that I knew held no promise for us – accounts of murders that had long since been solved, or whose salient characteristics were nothing like those of our case – but which were so morbidly fascinating on their own merits that I had to see how they turned out.

Precisely – the bodies were a mirror image of some savage set of experiences that were central to the evolution of our man’s mind.

Whatever poor team of maidservants had to stuff her into the kind of tight-waisted gown she was wearing that evening earned their pay as sure as any coal miner, that much was certain. The.

The country that manufactures nothing, ran the old saying in such towns, eventually becomes nothing;.

You know, Mr. Moore, you wouldn’t figure a stinkhole this city to have so many start over it. Seems like the smell’d be enough to drive ’em away...

We set out on the trail of a murderous monster and ended up face to face with a frightened child.

All of which would have been merely comical, had it not also reflected a very serious reality: most such officials, in their zeal to treat every criminal event as a chance to display supreme control of social order, had forgotten that lawbreakers most often operate quietly and in the shadows, places where men wearing body armor and military helmets not only were out of place, but made the task of investigating the dark deeds that take place in those shadows all the more difficult.

He’s a journalist. They come in two varieties, cynics and liars.

A man can be a bachelor, and still be a man – because of his mind, his character, his work. But a woman without children? She’s a spinster, Stevie – and a spinster is always something less than a woman.