Fortune Favours the Dead (Pentecost and Parker, #1)

by Stephen Spotswood

I thought about trying out some girlish charm, but I’ve never quite gotten the hang of it.

To be honest, those hick sheriffs scared me a lot more than any of these city dicks.

“Now, I don’t care what you’re infested with, I want a hug.”

I went downstairs to call a man about a corpse.

Whenever someone bends over backward to tell me so-and-so was a saint, I always wonder what sins they’re trying to sweep away.

“It seems that the argument you were leading to was that religion has been used through the centuries as a goad to enforce the law,” Ms. P explained. “That the ones hovering above are not just the dead but whoever happens to be in power, whoever is holding on to that goad.”

It’s not that I don’t think Ms. Pentecost is a good judge of character. She hired me, after all.

“Whatever you tell me to do.” The line dripped with the kind of innuendo they invented the Hays Code for.

Apparently you had to do a lot worse than embezzlement and murder to turn off the U.S. government.

No accent, unless you consider whiskey an accent.

“Be as circumspect as you feel is needed,” she’d told me. “But do not deny who you are. There will always be someone looking to beat you down. Do not do their job for them.”