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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

futility of making plans. Life had its own agenda.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, McEwan’s Atonement.

He once said to me that it was like being in one of those Russian prisons where they lock you up without telling you the length of your sentence.

It tasted like all foreign spirits do after they’ve passed through Heathrow. Wrong.

He fixed it in one of those machines that uses capsules and froths up the milk on the side.

In Ian McEwan’s novel Enduring Love there’s an extremely good description of what happens to a human body when it falls from a great height

Att1cus.

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

metrosexual for this folly? This was where he had died. I was reminded

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

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.

I had devoted my whole life to books; to bookshops; to booksellers; to bookish people like Charles and Alan. And in doing so, I had ended up like a book: on the shelf.

The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

Man was a complicated animal capable of extraordinary good and great evil – but he was definitely on his own.

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.

that moment, Fraser was utterly aware of the smallness of the room, the hopelessness of a life broken.

It occurred to him that Blakiston was an outcast. He was in exile from himself.

It seemed to be a remarkably up-beat interpretation of such an act of vandalism. Her husband’s hands were visibly shaking as he held the paper.

seemed to be a remarkably up-beat interpretation of such an act of vandalism. Her

she’s trying another tack. ‘Do you really believe

Victorian novel, perhaps something by Wilkie Collins.

The most obvious conclusions are the ones I try to avoid.

brekky.

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.

You’re joking. 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

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.

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.

My mum and dad were Jehovah’s Witnesses, which I know sounds crazy but it’s the truth. Mum used to go round the island, distributing copies of The Watchtower, door to door.’ He paused. ‘Do you know what her biggest tragedy was? She ran out of doors.

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.

This is 1955, for heaven’s sake. Not the Middle Ages! Of course, it doesn’t help having the bloody Tories still in power but you’d have thought we’d have moved away from the days when people were given wealth and power simply because of an accident of birth.

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.

being published. But I’d known Alan Conway for eleven years, or I thought I had, and I found it almost impossible to believe that he could have produced this, all four hundred and twenty pages of it. It was as if he was whispering to me as I lay there in the darkness, telling me something I didn’t want to hear.

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.

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.

and it wasn’t even as if he did anything to deserve it. He just inherited it from his father and his father before him. This is 1955, for heaven’s sake. Not the Middle Ages! Of course, it doesn’t help having the bloody Tories still in power but you’d have thought we’d have moved away from the days when people were given wealth and power simply because of an accident of birth.

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

I didn’t sleep well that night. I’m used to bad writing. I’ve looked at plenty of novels that have no hope of being published. But I’d known Alan Conway for eleven years, or I thought I had, and I found it almost impossible to believe that he could have produced this, all four hundred and twenty pages of it. It was as if he was whispering to me as I lay there in the darkness, telling me something I didn’t want to hear.

The unsigned will is one of those tropes of detective fiction that I’ve come to dislike, only because it’s so overused. In real life, a lot of people don’t even bother to make a will but then we’ve all managed to persuade ourselves that we’re going to live for ever. They certainly don’t go round the place threatening to change it in order to give someone the perfect excuse to come and kill them. It looked as if Alan Conway had done exactly that.

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