Boot Hill

     "You won't see the town until we get close."

    "Near that mesa?"

    "Right up against it. Small town, about four hundred people when they're all home. Being off the state highway, no tourists ever go there. Nothin' to see, anyway."

    "No boot hill?" Nearly all of the little mining towns in this section have a boot hill, and from the look of them, shooting up your neighbors must have been the outstanding recreation in the old days.

    "Oh, sure. Not many in this one, though. About fifteen or twenty with markers, but they buried most of them without any kind of a slab. This boot hill couldn't hold a candle to Pioche. Over there they buried seventy-five before the first one died of natural causes.

(from "The Hills of Homicide," by Louis L'Amour)

Not an excuse, but closer than some

    From the beginning he had been inclined to sympathize with the financier who was writhing in the net cast about him by an unscrupulous blackmailer. Of all the crimes in the book he detested blackmail most, and it had been difficult to work up any real feeling about Sara Morton's death since learning of her attempted extortion scheme.

    True, blackmail didn't excuse murder in the eyes of the law, but in Harsh's case, considering his enormous loss if she exposed him, it was a pretty fair excuse.    

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

Elaborate preparations

     "I want to handle this so you'll know I haven't double-crossed you no matter what happens. The Golden Cock bar will be crowded, and I'll mingle in the thickest of the crowds. The police may tail me and be watching. Don't speak to me or give yourself away in any way. Have a brief note wadded up to slip into my right hand, telling me where to meet you. I'll stay in plain sight after you give it to me, and won't communicate with anyone until I go out to my car and read the note. You can follow me to make sure I'm not being tailed. Then you'll know I'm on the level." 

    Shayne paused, feeling uncertain, yet hopeful. He knew it wasn't very good, but it was the best he could think of on the spur of the moment.

    "That sounds like a lot of melodramatic hocus-pocus," his caller complained.

    "That's the way it has to be if you want to see me tonight," he said flatly. "At the Golden Cock in half an hour." He cradled the receiver before the man could make further protests.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne," by Brett Halliday)

Bluffing his way

     "I think I know your name," Shayne lied tranquilly.

    "I assure you that I did not kill her, Shayne," His voice broke on a falsetto key like the changing voice of a teenaged boy.

    "But you have no alibi for before seven?" Shayne said.

    "Precisely. And even though that alibi is sufficient, you can readily understand that a police investigation would bring the whole story to light . . . and ruin me."

    "Naturally," Shayne scowled heavily, wondering how long he could keep the man talking without giving away the fact that he hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne," by Brett Halliday)

It wasn't suicide

     "Sara Morton is dead. She was evidently dead when you and Beatrice and I tried to rouse her around nine o'clock in her hotel room."

    "Suicide?"

    "I said murder, Mike," Gentry reminded him.

    "But you didn't say Sara Morton."

    "Gentry glanced up at Shayne with eyes like streaked granite. "Suicides don't jab a pair of long-bladed shears into the jugular and then go in the bathroom to wash the blood off the weapon, carry it back in the room and then lie down to die. Not without dropping a little blood along the way they don't."

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

How to stop the tears?

 Her head rested against the reporter's bony shoulder and his arm was around her. Tears streamed down her face, and Rourke's slaty eyes held the bewildered look of a man who had failed to stop a woman from crying.

(from This Is It, Michael Shayne, by Brett Halliday)

I could do with less of those kinds of compliments

     "It was like you to say that, Bertie. I respect you for it."

    "Oh, no."

    "Yes. You have a splendid, chivalrous soul."

    "Not a bit."

    "Yes, you have. You remind me of Cyrano."

    "Who?"

    "Cyrano de Bergerac."

    "The chap with the nose?"

    "Yes."

    I can't say I was any too pleased. I felt the old beak furtively. It was a big on the prominent side, perhaps, but, dash it, not in the Cyrano class. It began to look as if the next thing this girl would do would be to compare me to Schnozzle Durante.

(from Right Ho, Jeeves, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)