A Quote by Carolyn Wells

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

Carolyn Wells

Quote Topics

Detective Detective Story Story Will

Quote Author

Carolyn Wells
American - Author
June 18, 1862 - March 26, 1942

I think the detective story is by far the best upholder of the democratic doctrine in literature. I mean, there couldn't have been detective stories until there were democracies, because the very foundation of the detective story is the thesis that if you're guilty you'll get it in the neck and if you're innocent you can't possibly be harmed. No matter who you are.

Rex Stout

What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a good trick and I usually try to play it, but I can't attach more than secondary importance to it. The puzzle isn't so interesting to me as the behavior of the detective attacking it.

Dashiell Hammett

The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn't get published. The average -- or only slightly above average -- detective story does.... Whereas the good novel is not at all the same kind of book as the bad novel. It is about entirely different things. But the good detective story and the bad detective story are about exactly the same things, and they are about them in very much the same way.

Raymond Chandler

Occasionally, I have written about stories related to crime, but I have never attempted a traditional detective story. So I want to write a true detective story.

Ruskin Bond

I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle.

Sergei Lukyanenko

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.

Otto Penzler

Anyone can write a detective story about a detective who fails, for Pete's sake. That's pretty unambitious.

Mark Waid

I don’t think I would ever want to be a writer of detective stories - but I would like to be a detective and there is a large deal of detection in the short story.

Mary Lavin

But the first published thing I did was a detective story, detective novel, and I did that on my own.

Peter Shaffer

American violence is public life, it's a public way of life, it became a form, a detective story form. So I should think that any number of black writers should go into the detective story form.

Chester Himes

The L.A Trilogy is a series of three novels starring Ray, a robot detective, and his boss, a computer called Googol. Set in an alternative version of 1960s Los Angeles, each book will be more or less standalone but together will form an overarching story arc with 'Brisk Money' as the origin story.

Adam Christopher

There certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks.

Dorothy L. Sayers

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

Agatha Christie

You get to crack the code of the play. You get to really pick at it and see, 'What is the story that we're telling?' 'What are the clues in the text that I can find that will help inform what story we're telling?' It's almost like a detective mystery.

Phillipa Soo

If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.

Rex Stout

I read a lot of detective stories because they always deliver. They give you a beginning, a middle, and an end - a resolution. The modern novels I read don't always deliver because I'm looking essentially for a story. As in Shakespeare, "The play's the thing." In particular I read detective stories for pacing, plot and suspense.

Robert Cormier

A Quote by Carolyn Wells

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors