Muriel Spark Quotes

I like murder mysteries, the Agatha Christie kinds of things where you know that it's all going to be neatly wound up at the end.

I admit," I said, "that a second murder in a book often cheers things up." - Hastings

Crime fiction has always been what I wanted to read, so when I sat down to write my first book, it was naturally the way that I was going to go.

I really wanted to write an adventure story, a murder-mystery that was set during the gold-rush years in New Zealand.

Although we might think of Holmes as the Ur-sleuth, the seminal inspiration for many writers comes not from the chronicles of Baker Street but from the intricately plotted novels of Charles Dickens and his colleague Wilkie Collins, who in works like 'Bleak House' and 'The Moonstone' established the modern, character-driven mystery novel.

The detective novel is the art-for-art's-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.

Has all the trappings of a mystery novel, doesn't it?

I confess to loving a good murder mystery - anything by Scott Turow or John Grisham. Maybe it's a holdover from my days as a criminal prosecutor in Seattle.

When I started writing the third book, 'The Kill,' the intention was just to write a thriller, a crime novel for myself, really, in which there would be no body, no solution - where you would look at an event from different people's perspectives.

I've always been a secret locked-room fanatic. I read my first one when I was about ten or 11, Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express,' with David Niven and Peter Ustinov on the cover.

This summer, I'll be bringing out a mystery that involves a young lawyer and a court scene the likes of which I don't think you've ever seen. Hollywood said this is James Patterson meets John Grisham.

Detective fiction could not have existed without Edgar Allan Poe.

Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find.

For escape, I love popcorn thrillers that you can read in a weekend, like 'Sharp Objects' and 'The Woman in Cabin 10.'

I liked the idea of a whodunit revolving around a marriage.

'Original Sin' is, for me, a murder mystery with a huge cast that plays out on a grand stage.

I've been in an Agatha Christie called 'The Sittaford Mystery,' which I enjoyed, but 'The Pale Horse' has a real sense of intrigue and the jigsaw pieces fitting together.

I've always really liked murder mysteries and thrillers, and great to be able to be actually part of one.

Plot a murder, you're saying. But every plot is a murder in effect. To plot is to die, whether we know it or not.

Drawing Dead is a brilliant noir from one of Australia's most exciting new novelists.

...and then a murder mystery will occur.

Where there's a will there's a detective story.

Lisbeth Salander is one of the most compelling heroines of 21st century crime literature, and I am thrilled to see readers have welcomed her return.

There are two ways to approach the writing of a mystery novel: adhere to the rules, or break them with glee.

Even in a manuscript form, 'The Girl on the Train' sort of leapt off the pages as a contemporary suspense drama-slash-thriller. It has all the mechanics of a thriller, but at the heart of it was a great character study.