Magpie Murders Quotes

You must know that feeling when it's raining outside and the heating's on and you lose yourself, utterly, in a book. You read and you read and you feel the pages slipping through your fingers until suddenly there are fewer in your right hand than there are in your left and you want to slow down but you still hurtle on towards a conclusion you can hardly bear to discover.

As far as I'm concerned, you can't beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn't seen it from the start.

But I’m not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we enjoy it.

The last refuge of the intelligentsia: when life gets too difficult, go find something to read.

The most obvious conclusions are the ones I try to avoid

I held out the packet and suddenly we were friends. That's one of the only good things about being a smoker these days. You're part of a persecuted minority. You bond easily.

Rumours and malicious gossip are like bindweed. They cannot be cut back, even with the sword of truth. I can, however, offer you this comfort. Given time, they will wither and die of their own volition.

There are supposed to be endorphins or whatever that make you feel great when you exercise. I don't think I have any, because I only feel great when I'm lying on the sofa reading a book, possibly while simultaneously eating biscuits.

There are some relationships that succeed only because they are impossible, that actually need unhappiness to continue.

In just about every other book I can think of, we're chasing on the heels of our heroes - the spies, the soldiers, the romantics, the adventurers. But we stand shoulder to shoulder with the detective.

Life may imitate art – but it usually falls short of it.

He used language as a place for us to hide.

These had been his plans. But if there was one thing that life had taught him, it was the futility of making plans. Life had its own agenda.

It's strange when you think about it. There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative fiction to survive without them. And yet there are almost none in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area. Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery? And what is it that attracts us? The crime, or the solution? Do we have some primal need of bloodshed because our own lives are so safe, so comfortable?

I've watched every episode of Poirot and Midsomer Murders on TV. I never guess the ending and I can't wait for the moment when the detective gathers all the suspects in the room and, like a magician conjuring silk scarves out of the air, makes the whole thing make sense.

In a world full of uncertainties, is it not inherently satisfying to come to the last page with every i dotted and every t crossed?

One can think of the truth as eine vertiefung – a sort of deep valley which may not be visible from a distance but which will come upon you quite suddenly. There are many ways to arrive there.

You must know that feeling when it’s raining outside and the heating’s on and you lose yourself, utterly, in a book.

You'd have thought that after twenty years editing murder mysteries I'd have noticed when I found myself in the middle of one.

Alan invented all sorts of ways of expressing things so that only he and I understood. He used language as a place for us to hide.

Why does anyone take photographs ever? We never look at them anymore.

But I’m not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative.

Holmes is depressed. Poirot is vain. Miss Marple is brusque and eccentric. They don’t have to be attractive. Look at Nero Wolfe who was so fat that he couldn’t even leave his New York home and had to have a custom-made chair to support his weight!

The house is seventies modern with sliding windows, gas-effect and a giant TV in the living room. There are almost no books. I'm not making any judgement. It's just the sort of thing I can't help but notice.

I had chosen to play the detective—and if there is one thing that unites all the detectives I've ever read about, it's their inherent loneliness. The suspects know each other. They may well be family or friends. But the detective is always the outsider. He asks the necessary questions but he doesn't actually form a relationship with anyone. He doesn't trust them, and they in turn are afraid of him. It's a relationship based entirely on deception and it's one that, ultimately, goes nowhere. Once the killer has been identified, the detective leaves and is never seen again. In fact, everyone is glad to see the back of him.

life had a pattern and that a coincidence was simply the moment when that pattern became briefly visible.

Inspector Morse, Taggart, Lewis, Foyle’s War, Endeavour, A Touch of Frost, Luther, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Cracker, Broadchurch and even bloody Maigret and Wallander – British TV would disappear into a dot on the screen without murder.

A bottle of wine. A family-sized packet of Nacho Cheese Flavoured Tortilla Chips and a jar of hot salsa dip. A packet of cigarettes on the side (I know, I know). The rain hammering against the windows. And a book. What could have been lovelier?

But he was a man without a shadow -- or perhaps a shadow without a man.

he had expressed the belief that everything in life had a pattern and that a coincidence was simply the moment when that pattern became briefly visible.

Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative.

Pünd remembered their first case together when Fraser had failed to notice that his travelling companion, on the three-fifty train from Paddington, was actually dead.

It’s none of my business, but sometimes you can spend so much time chasing something that you lose everything else while you’re about it.

Somehow, she was always there when you needed her. The trouble was, she was also there when you didn’t.

But that's how it is when you're a kid, isn't it? You have all these dreams and, unless you're lucky, they never amount to anything.

Agnes Carmichael, who turns out to be the killer, hasn’t spoken a word – hardly surprising, as she’s a deaf mute.

I have spoken to you before of the nature of human wickedness, my friend. How it is the small lies and evasions which nobody sees or detects but which can come together and smother you like the fumes in a house fire.

But I'm not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that's ones of the reasons we enjoy it.

He had a particular liking for olde England, especially if the olde was spelled with an e. He found things like croquet, cream teas and cricket both incomprehensible and irresistible and he would have been in his element here.

It meant nothing to me. You can stick a piece of metal on a coward and a liar but it won’t change what he is.

I was asleep, of course, and dreaming, but I remember wondering how he had managed to enter my world before the thought occurred to me that maybe it was I who had entered his.

futility of making plans. Life had its own agenda.

But there have been times when I have been very much in the shadows, when I have looked into the valley of death and wished – and wished I could enter.

You know, they say in America that the average child sees eight thousand murders before they leave elementary school. Makes you think, doesn’t it.

Fraser had the immediate thought that his was a man whom it would be easy to dislike. He did not just arouse antipathy; he almost seemed to cultivate it.

But if there was one thing that life had taught him, it was the futility of making plans. Life had its own agenda.

....everything in life had a pattern and that a coincidence was simply the moment when that pattern became briefly visible.

There are a lot of people who don’t like a lot of people but they don’t go around the place murdering them.

That’s the thing about funerals. They’re completely hypocritical. Everyone says how wonderful the deceased was, how kind, how generous when, deep down, they know it’s not true.

It is true that we have many ways of coping with loss,’ he said. ‘And grief is never rational.

We need our literary heroes. Life is dark and complicated but they shine out. They’re the beacons that we follow.

Magpie Murders pays quiet homage to Agatha Christie at least half a dozen times.

Swear words in books have always struck me as lazy and over-familiar. But the ‘c’ word is more than that. It’s used by sour, frustrated men, nearly always about women. It’s a word full of misogyny – crudely offensive.

But I'm not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that's one of the reasons we enjoy it.

But such gossip cannot be confronted. Rumours and malicious gossip are like bindweed. They cannot be cut back, even with the sword of truth. I can, however, offer you this comfort. Given time, they will wither and die of their own volition.

As far as I’m concerned, you can’t beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn’t seen it from the start.

I was with him throughout the whole process: writing the books, finishing them and then the horrible disappointment when nobody was interested. You have no idea what it’s like, Susan, being rejected, those letters that turn up in the post with six or seven lines dismissing the work of a whole year.

Atticus Pund did not reply but he knew from his experience that murderers could, indeed, smile and make pleasant conversation one minute and strike violently the next. His experiences during the war had also taught him much about what he called the institutionalisation of murder; how, if you surrounded murder with enough forms and procedures, if you could convince yourself that it was an absolute necessity, then ultimately it would not be murder at all.

It was the reference to Down’s syndrome that most upset him. Mary described it as an ‘awful sickness’. It wasn’t. It was a condition, not an illness. What sort of woman could see it as a threat to her own bloodline? Had she really pulled up the drawbridge on her son’s marriage simply to protect future grandchildren from

Whodunnits are all about truth: nothing more nothing less. In a world full of uncertainties, is it not inherently satisfying to come to the last page with every i dotted and every t > crossed? The stories mimic our experience in the world. We are surrounded by tensions and ambiguities, which we spend half our life trying to resolve, and we'll probably be on our own deathbed when we reach that moment when everything makes sense. Just about every whodunnit provides that pleasure. It is the reason for their existence.

free wine and food were worth having even if they had no idea who had actually died.

One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret, Never to be told.

But such gossip cannot be confronted. Rumours and malicious gossip are like bindweed. They cannot be cut back, even with the sword of truth.

I couldn't see myself as some twenty-first century Shirley Valentine, sitting on the rocks, a thousand miles from the nearest Waterstones.

Blakiston was an outcast. He was in exile from himself

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

everything in life had a pattern and that a coincidence was simply the moment when that pattern became briefly visible.

in America that the average child sees eight thousand murders before they leave elementary school.

Mrs Blakiston had always been in a hurry. It was impossible to escape the thought. She had quite literally flung herself down the stairs, hurrying into her own death.

There’s something quite comforting about mess, especially when there’s no one else there to complain.

I hadn't liked him the day I'd met him although the strange thing is that I'd always loved his books.

It's often occurred to me that divorce suits some women.

British TV would disappear into a dot on the screen without murder.

It was almost like discovering that Enid Blyton, in her spare time, had turned to pornography.

she didn’t colour her hair, which was lost in the dead man’s land between brown and grey.

that four hundred years of careful in-breeding should amount to nothing more.

brekky.

That’s one of the only good things about being a smoker these days. You’re part of a persecuted minority. You bond easily.

I can’t even remember who said it, but the only way that book was going to change someone’s life was if it fell on them.

and after arriving in England, he had set himself up as a private detective, helping the police on numerous occasions. He

I hurried forward and entered the church. The interior was huge, cluttered, draughty, a collage of different centuries. It was probably unhappy to have arrived at this one: the twelfth century had provided the arches, the sixteenth the lovely wooden ceiling, the eighteenth the altar – and what had the twenty-first bestowed upon St Michael? Atheism and indifference.

The strange thing was that he was more relaxed, now, after being told the news. It was as if he had always been expecting it and was merely grateful that, at last, it had been delivered.

You didn’t hate her,’ Joy said, quietly. ‘Things weren’t right between you, that’s all. You were both living in the shadow of what had happened and you didn’t realise how much it was hurting you.

The house is seventies modern with sliding windows, gas-effect fires and a giant TV in the living room. There are almost no books. I'm not making any judgment. It's just the sort of thing I can't help but notice.

In a whodunnit, when a detective hears that Sir Somebody Smith has been stabbed thirty-six times on a train or decapitated, they accept it as a quite natural occurrence. They pack their bags and head off to ask questions, collect clues, ultimately to make an arrest. But I wasn't a detective. I was an editor—and, until a week ago, not a single one of my acquaintances had managed to die in an unusual and violent manner. Apart from my own parents and Alan, I hardly knew anyone who had died at all. It's strange when you think about it. There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative fiction to survive without them. And yet there are almost none in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area. Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery and what is it that attracts us—the crime or the solution? Do we have some primal need of bloodshed because our own lives are so safe, so comfortable? I made a mental note to check out Alan's sales figures in San Pedro Sula in Honduras (the murder capital of the world). It might be that they didn't read him at all.

Much later that night, I thought the door opened and a man came into the bedroom. He was leaning on a stick. He didn't say anything but he stood there, looking sadly at Andreas and me, and as a shaft of moonlight came slanting in through the window, I recognized Atticus Pünd. I was asleep, of course, and dreaming, but I remember wondering how he had managed to enter my world before the thought occurred to me that maybe it was I who had entered his.

But I’m not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we enjoy it. But

you can’t beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn’t seen it from the start.

She thought the sun shone out of his you-know-where! And she’d been his housekeeper for years and years. Keeper of the keys! She cooked for him, cleaned for him, gave half her life to him. I’m sure he’d have wanted to be there for the send-off.

Jeffrey considered himself a good judge of character and cast an almost painterly eye over the crowd gathered around the grave that he had himself dug. He had his opinions about every one of them. And what better place than a funeral for a study in human nature?

At the same time, he was not afraid of being proved wrong. If, after a lifetime of considered reason, he found himself being called to judgement in some sort of starry chamber, he was sure he would be forgiven. From what he understood, God was the forgiving sort.

I am sixty-five years old. I have had a long life and I will say that in many respects it has been a good one. I had expected to die on many occasions before now. You might even say that death has been a companion of mine, always walking two steps behind. Well, now he has caught up.

There is something about the village of Saxby-on-Avon that concerns me,’ he went on. ‘I have spoken to you before of the nature of human wickedness, my friend. How it is the small lies and evasions which nobody sees or detects but which can come together and smother you like the fumes in a house fire.’ He turned and surveyed the surrounding buildings, the shaded square. ‘They are all around us. Already there have been two deaths: three, if you include the child who died in the lake all those years ago. They are all connected. We must move quickly before there is a fourth.

I made the mistake of renting a cottage in a village near Chichester. Charles had advised against it but at the time I’d thought how nice it would be to get away now and then for the weekend. He was right. I couldn’t wait to get back. I soon discovered that every time I made one friend I made three enemies and that arguments about such issues as car parking, the church bells, dog waste and hanging flower baskets dominated daily life to such an extent that everyone was permanently at each other’s throats. That’s the truth of it. Emotions which are quickly lost in the noise and chaos of the city fester around the village square, driving people to psychosis and violence. It’s a gift to the whodunnit writer.

It was probably because they sensed her unhappiness. Clarissa was all on her own. She had never married. She seemed to spend half her life in the church. He was always seeing her coming in and out. To be fair to her, she often stopped to have a chat with him but then of course she didn’t really have anyone to talk to unless she was on her knees. She looked a bit like her brother, Sir Magnus,

There was a pub looking out over the graveyard. The Queen’s Arms, where Pünd had stayed, was actually called the King’s Head. The village noticeboard where Joy had posted her notice of infidelity was on one side of the square. The village shop and the bakery – it was called the Pump House – was on the other. The castle, which cast a shadow over Dr Redwing’s house, and which must have been built around the same time as the one I had seen in Framlingham, was a short distance away. There was even a Daphne Road. In the book it had been Neville Brent’s address but in the real world it was Alan’s sister who lived there. The house was very much as he had described it. I wondered what this meant. Claire Jenkins had been unable to see me the day before but had agreed to meet me at lunchtime. I got there early and strolled around the village, following the main road all the way down to the River Alde. The river doesn’t exist in Alan’s book – it’s been replaced by the main road to Bath. Pye Hall is somewhere over to the left, which would in

The two men sat facing each other in the smartly furnished office at the bottom end of Harley Street and knew that they had reached the final act of a drama that had been played out many times before. Six weeks ago, they hadn’t even known each other. Now they were united in the most intimate way of all. One had given the news. The other had received it. Neither of them allowed very much emotion to show in their face. It was part of the procedure, a gentlemen’s agreement, that they should do their best to conceal it. ‘May I ask, Dr Benson, how long would you say I have remaining?’ Atticus Pünd asked.

You must know that feeling when it’s raining outside and the heating’s on and you lose yourself, utterly, in a book. You read and you read and you feel the pages slipping through your fingers until suddenly there are fewer in your right hand than there are in your left and you want to slow down but you still hurtle on towards a conclusion you can hardly bear to discover. That is the particular power of the whodunnit which has, I think, a special place within the general panoply of literary fiction because, of all characters, the detective enjoys a particular, indeed a unique relationship with the reader.

I had chosen to play the detective – and if there is one thing that unites all the detectives I’ve ever read about, it’s their inherent loneliness. The suspects know each other. They may well be family or friends. But the detective is always the outsider. He asks the necessary questions but he doesn’t actually form a relationship with anyone. He doesn’t trust them, and they in turn are afraid of him. It’s a relationship based entirely on deception and it’s one that, ultimately, goes nowhere. Once the killer has been identified, the detective leaves and is never seen again. In fact, everyone is glad to see the back of him. I felt some of this with Charles:

This business with Sir Magnus Pye had got off to an inauspicious start. It was one thing to be stabbed in your own home—but to be decapitated with a medieval sword the moment darkness fell was quite simply outrageous. Saxby-on-Avon was such a quiet place! Yes, there had been that business with the cleaner, the woman who had tripped up and fallen down the stairs, but this was something else again. Could it really be true that one of the villagers, living in a Georgian house perhaps, going to church and playing for the local cricket team, mowing their lawn on Sunday mornings and selling home-made marmalade at the village fête, was a homicidal maniac? The answer was yes—quite possibly.