Marked (Alex Verus, #9)

by Benedict Jacka

‘Everyone has aggressive impulses,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘They’re a fundamental part of the human condition. If you meet someone who seems not to have any, they’re either channelling them somewhere else or keeping them suppressed. Usually, in the latter case, it ends up turning inward and manifesting as depression.

The simple truth is that I’m a lot more comfortable dealing with a woman who wants to kill me than one who wants to kiss me, and yes, I know how screwed-up that sounds.

‘It feels a little bit strange that you don’t even bother identifying the people trying to kill you any more.’ ‘Who has that kind of time?’

There’s a saying that the chances of a secret leaking is proportional not to the number of people who know, but to the square of the number of people who know.

‘One of my first self-defence teachers told me that I shouldn’t bother with any technique that I couldn’t learn in five minutes,’ I said. ‘Idea is, if you can make it work in five minutes, then practising will make it better. If you can’t make it work in five minutes, then you probably won’t be able to make it work in a high-stress situation. When your life’s at stake you want something that works every time. Simple is good.’

‘Most people don’t have to think about this kind of stuff. They pick friends based on whether they’re fun to hang out with. When you’ve dealt with the kinds of things we have, it teaches you to pay a lot of attention to whether someone’s going to be there when things go wrong.’