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We shouldn’t assume that women and girls don’t know the difference between reality and fantasy. We don’t fear that men who read murder mysteries and thrillers are going to have a hard time not becoming serial killers, so why should we assume that a girl won’t know that she doesn’t have to change from a mermaid to human in order to find love just because of a movie?
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Lyssa Kay Adams (The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club, #1))
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She was born under the sign of Gemini. And that stands for the good and evil twin. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde both hiding and residing inside her heart. Her good twin was not bad at all. But her evil twin was even better, and showed up to be way too fatal!
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Ana Claudia Antunes (Mysterious Murder of Marilyn Monroe)
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Nudity and explicit sex are far more easily available now than are clear images of death. The quasi-violence of movies and television dwells on the lively acts of killing – flying kicks, roaring weapons, crashing cars, flaming explosions. These are the moral equivalents of old-time cinematic sex. The fictional spurting of gun muzzles after flirtation and seduction but stop a titillating instant short of actual copulation. The results of such aggressive vivacity remain a mystery. The corpse itself, riddled and gaping, swelling or dismembered, the action of heat and bacteria, of mummification or decay are the most illicit pornography.
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Katherine Dunn
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Had a big trial. It was like an Errol Flynn movie.
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Jeannie Walker (Fighting the Devil: A True Story of Consuming Passion, Deadly Poison, and Murder)
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That's exactly where you're wrong! Any kind of person can murder. Purely circumstances and not a thing to do with temperament! People get so far -- and it takes just the least little thing to push them over the brink. Anybody. Even your grandmother. I know.
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Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train)
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When I rolled out of bed at the butt crack of dawn, I had no idea my day would start with a missing sheep and end with a dead dude in a crotchless mankini.
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Zara Keane (Movie Club Mysteries: Books 1-3: Dial P for Poison / The Postman Always Dies Twice / How to Murder a Millionaire (Movie Club Mysteries #1-3))
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El Lindo tastes like the line from that famous murder mystery movie “Rambo,” when Nicolas Cage rips off his tuxedo and says, “I may be a lot of things, but I ain’t a man to call Taco Bell Mexican cuisine." I love a good romance.
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Jarod Kintz (94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat)
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The pizza at Brick Oven tastes like that classic line from that famous murder mystery movie “Rambo,” where Nicholas Cage rips off his tuxedo and says, “I may be a lot of things, but I ain’t no bowl of duck soup, sloshing around in a hurricane." Rambo II is even more romantic.
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Jarod Kintz (BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm presents: Two Ducks Brawling Is A Pre-Pillow Fight)
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Never settle for bad coffee, bad men, and bad books,” Philomena said, staggering through the café door laden with a stack of movie magazines.
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Zara Keane (Movie Club Mysteries: Books 1-3: Dial P for Poison / The Postman Always Dies Twice / How to Murder a Millionaire (Movie Club Mysteries #1-3))
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He’d never referred to me as ‘gorgeous’ before. That must have been some blow to the head.
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Zara Keane (Movie Club Mysteries: Books 1-3: Dial P for Poison / The Postman Always Dies Twice / How to Murder a Millionaire (Movie Club Mysteries #1-3))
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Why does Kubrick always chill our blood, and make us huddled up scared stiff with eyes wide shut? Because even dead he's still "Shinnying" with his old hand and his eye-catching plots.
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Ana Claudia Antunes (The Mysterious Murder of Marilyn Monroe)
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She wondered what it was about storytelling that made people want it almost as much as food and water, even more so in bad times than good. Movies had never drawn more patrons than during the Great Depression. Book sales often improved in a recession. The need went beyond a mere desire for entertainment and distraction from one's troubles. It was more profound and mysterious than that.
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Dean Koontz (Mr. Murder)
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Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman -- Tell us about the film you're going to make.
Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story.
Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?
Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.
Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?
Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you.
Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it.
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Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park: The Shooting Script)
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Cities have characters, pathologies that can make or destroy or infect you, states of mind that run through daily life as surely as a fault line. Chandler’s “mysterious something” was a mood of disenchantment, an intense spiritual malaise that identified itself with Los Angeles at a particular time, what we call noir. On the one hand noir is a narrow film genre, born in Hollywood in the late 1930s when European visual style, the twisted perspectives and stark chiaroscuros of German Expressionism, met an American literary idiom. This fruitful comingling gave birth to movies like Double Indemnity, directed by Vienna-born Billy Wilder and scripted by Raymond Chandler from a James M. Cain novella. The themes — murderous sex and the cool, intricate amorality of money — rose directly from the psychic mulch of Southern California. But L.A. is a city of big dreams and cruelly inevitable disappointments where noir is more than just a slice of cinema history; it’s a counter-tradition, the dark lens through which the booster myths came to be viewed, a disillusion that shadows even the best of times, an alienation that assails the sense like the harsh glitter of mica in the sidewalk on a pitiless Santa Ana day. Noir — in this sense a perspective on history and often a substitute for it — was born when the Roaring Twenties blew themselves out and hard times rushed in; it crystallized real-life events and the writhing collapse of the national economy before finding its interpreters in writers like Raymond Chandler.
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Richard Rayner (A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age)
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QUICK MENTAL RECAP: KIDNAPPED BY Mafia gang ruled by insane, chain-smoking reject from the sixties—female; discover husband has alias name and FBI badge that he’s been able to keep hidden from me for seventeen years (reminder to self: get a clue!); follow half-baked scheme provided by Brad Pitt look-alike to make a quick getaway through guest bathroom; wind up playing bad game of Twister in bathtub with Elvis Presley wannabe; witness the whacking of FBI husband; hear Elvis Presley wannabe proclaim, regarding husband’s whacker: “That’s No Toes” and follow up with obvious comment, “Dis ain’t good.” Would Al Pacino be caught dead in this movie? Definitely not.
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Karen Cantwell (Take the Monkeys and Run (Barbara Marr Murder Mystery, #1))
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wave which invaded her personal space like an invisible third person.
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L.B. Hathaway (Murder of a Movie Star (Posie Parker Mystery, #5))
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Nudity and explicit sex are far more easily available now than are clear images of death. The quasi-violence of movies and television dwells on the lively acts of killing – flying kicks, roaring weapons, crashing cars, flaming explosions. These are the moral equivalents of old-time cinematic sex. The fictional spurting of gun muzzles after flirtation and seduction but stop a titillating instant short of actual copulation. The results of such aggressive vivacity remain a mystery. The corpse itself, riddled and gaping, swelling or dismembered, the action of heat and bacteria, of mummification or decay are the most illicit pornography.
The images we seldom see are the aftermath of violent deaths. Your family newspaper will not print photos of the puddled suicide who jumped from the fourteenth floor. No car wrecks with the body parts unevenly distributed, no murder victim sprawled in his own juices. Despite the endless preaching against violent crime, despite the enormous and avid audience for mayhem, these images are taboo.
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Sean Tejaratchi (Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook)
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The classic murder mystery ends with a neat set of motives, a culprit and a comeuppance. Perhaps that is why we read them. Perhaps that is why we love them. Because real life offers us so few of these consolations, so few of these satisfactions. Maybe one day a clue will be uncovered or a confession will come to light to offer us the sense of closure the books and the movies have taught us to expect, and to believe we deserve.
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Ellery Lloyd (The Club)
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A prone form lay face down in the stream, a pool of red seeping from his head. It was Sergeant Reynolds.
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Zara Keane (How to Murder a Millionaire (Movie Club Mysteries #3))
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All of a sudden, Reynolds made a gurgling noise. I
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Zara Keane (How to Murder a Millionaire (Movie Club Mysteries #3))
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Never settle for bad coffee, bad men, and bad books,
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Zara Keane (Movie Club Mysteries: Books 1-3: Dial P for Poison / The Postman Always Dies Twice / How to Murder a Millionaire (Movie Club Mysteries #1-3))
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PEPPERMINT CREAM COCKTAIL 3/4 oz (20ml) crème de menthe 3/4 oz (20ml) white crème de cacao 3/4 oz (20ml) hazelnut liqueur 3/4 oz (20ml) Baileys Irish Cream 3/4 oz (20ml) cream 3/4 oz (20ml) milk Good quality cocoa powder Half-fill a cocktail shaker with ice cubes. Pour in all the ingredients and shake vigorously. Strain into a cocktail glass and top with milk to taste. Sift a light dusting of cocoa powder on the top and serve. Maggie’s tip: If you’d prefer a more subtle hint of mint, use half the recommended amount of crème de menthe and a little more Baileys.
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Zara Keane (Movie Club Mysteries: Books 1-3: Dial P for Poison / The Postman Always Dies Twice / How to Murder a Millionaire (Movie Club Mysteries #1-3))
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I like movies that make me think. Movies like Inception or Interstellar.” Complex movies that involved a deep level of deception. A clue about the man himself? Take it easy, Val. You like murder mysteries, but that doesn’t mean you want to kill someone.
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Jill Ramsower (Perfect Enemies (The Five Families, #6))
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I see movies in my head when I think and
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Diane Capri (Florida Is Murder: Due Justice and Surface Tension Mystery Double Feature)
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The weather changes its mood,” said Arthur. “When it’s sunny, like today, it’s full of hope and happiness. People are out. They’re more relaxed. When it rains, it’s romantic as well, but in a somber, melancholy way. The way you feel watching a black-and-white movie.
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Harper Lin (Baguette Murder (Patisserie Mystery, #3))
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FRANK
... so, many things happen in the 70s to transform the horror genre. Present end premodern fears mix, birthing scary movies which are more seedy, grim, but also more artistic and religious. Criminal evil escapes the prison of murder-mystery and revenge plots, making us see trough the eyes of killer and victim. Supernatural evil is freed from the gothic frame, making viewers believe again in the reality of the devil and other medieval superstitions. If the 60s were about love, the spirit of the 70s is fear. Which means they are more horribly real, more perversely in touch with the dark mystery.
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Nicola Masciandaro (SACER)
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My job, should I decide to undertake it, as it were, is to determine if the accident was by fault of impaired equipment or that of a preternatural event as the screaming boom operator would have one believe. I vote for a ghost. It makes things infinitely more interesting or my name isn‘t Beluga Stein, P.I. — Psychic Investigator. Part-time anyway. That is, when I‘m not teaching biology to a bunch of undergrads who know everything about libido except how to spell it. So my ballot is cast for a ghost.
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Wendy W. Webb
Zara Keane (Movie Club Mysteries: Books 1-3: Dial P for Poison / The Postman Always Dies Twice / How to Murder a Millionaire (Movie Club Mysteries #1-3))
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There’s the horror-movie version: a shadow with a knife, the one who escaped from the hospital on the hill during that storm. It’s the person living in the walls. In mystery novels, it might be the smiling stranger, the one with the passing knowledge of poisons. It’s the relative left out of the will, or the one recently added to it. It’s the jealous colleague at the museum who wants to be the first to announce the new archeological discovery. It’s the overly helpful person who follows the detective around. On the all-murder, true-crime channel, it’s the new neighbor with the boat, the one in his midforties to midfifties with the tan who has no past and who recently purchased a human-sized cooler. It’s the person who lives in the shack in the woods. It’s the unseen figure on the corner of the street. On all crime shows, it’s usually the third person the cops interview. It’s the one you sort of think it is. In life, the murderer is anyone. The reasons, the methods, the circumstances—the paths to becoming a murderer are as numerous as the stars. Understanding this is the first step to finding a murderer. You have to shut down the voices in your mind that say, “It has to be this person.” Murderers aren’t a type. They’re anyone.
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Maureen Johnson (The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2))
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I love A C Doyle's works, some of these sort stories would have been perfect for something like "The Twilight Zone", this tale is one of those. There is one great paragraph in this book, quote : "The charlatan is always the pioneer. From the astrologer came the astronomer, from the alchemist the chemist, from the mesmerist the experimental psychologist. The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow. Even such subtle and elusive things as dreams will in time be reduced to system and order. When that time comes the researches of our friends on the bookshelf yonder will no longer be the amusement of the mystic, but the foundations of a science." This is used (in an altered form) in the movie "Murder Rooms: Mysteries of the Real Sherlock Holmes".
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Sir A C Doyle
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He grinned evilly, like Bruce the shark from that fish movie Odelia likes to watch when she’s babysitting one of her cousins.
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Nic Saint (Purrfect Murder (The Mysteries of Max, #1))
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She’s also worked a number of unruly Anarres events: board game nights, murder- mystery role-plays, painting and wine nights, speed dating, speed- dating board game nights, queer speed-dating board game nights, and, of course, movie nights.
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Cadwell Turnbull (No Gods, No Monsters (Convergence Saga #1))
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She remembered watching a movie from some years ago, when she’d had nothing else to do while snowed in at a Denver hotel, something with Kellie Martin on The Women’s Network. A detective identified a singer’s killer by studying the audience in concert footage. The killer—a stalker—showed up in every film.
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Alexia Gordon (Murder in G Major (Gethsemane Brown Mysteries #1))
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But I can keep her sequestered in her room until the case is solved.” “Wonder how long that’ll take, Cy?” “I don’t know. Sometimes it takes years to solve a murder.” The two of us laughed, even though both of us knew that neither of us would be satisfied if the case dragged on. “Okay, Louie, it’s time to inconvenience the guests. Round up the usual suspects.” My partner laughed at my reference to the movie Casablanca, then turned toward the door. Our job wasn’t finished. It had barely begun.
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Steve Demaree (Murder in the Winter (Dekker Cozy Mystery #2))
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but some of the best dialogue put down on paper. Eddie Coyle is a low-level Boston gangster caught up in a gunrunning scheme. Read the book, then see the movie starring Robert Mitchum. Confess, Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald The second of the brilliant Fletch series, this one takes place entirely in Boston. It involves a murder mystery, an art heist, and the introduction of Mcdonald’s second greatest character, Inspector Flynn of the Boston Police Department. Coma by Robin Cook Maybe I think this book is so terrifying because I read it when I was too young, but I still get chills just
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Peter Swanson (The Kind Worth Killing)