Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three Quotes

“Robbie, at the moment, was very much full of hell. I was trying out a big Zoomar telescopic lens on my new Bell & Howell movie camera, holding on Robbie while she danced and pranced. She posed, flew around, wiggled a little. The word for it was: sensational.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“the phone rang once. It was a gal with a thready voice asking that I please hurry to her address because tiny saucer-shaped men were on her roof, screeching down the chimney at her. I told her to call 2680 at City Hall: the police psycho detail; they got calls like that every day.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“If you've been around Los Angeles much, you know that desolate, unlighted strip of highway, Chavez Ravine Road, that stretches from Adobe Street to Elysian Park. It's solitary and lonely enough in the daytime.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“Usually, I park on North Rossmore in front of the Spartan Apartment Hotel, but tonight I drove to the alley behind the Spartan and pulled into one of the slots there.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“He a user?” Samson nodded. And a pusher. But we never proved it. Got him for possession, that’s all. He worked the black cigar from one side of his wide mouth to the other,”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“She was a tall, firm, abundantly curvaceous, lovely with pollen-gold hair and a shape to make corpses kick open caskets.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“We walked on to Don the Beachcomber’s Bora Bora Lounge and went inside, sat at the Dagger Bar. Loana ordered a Cherry Blossom and I ordered, after slight hesitation, a Puka Puka.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“was sweating like a fat Eskimo at the equator.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“cat in A Christmas Carol, and peering”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“S. Highway 91 to a small cocktail lounge called Cosmos, just past the Algiers and on the opposite side of the Strip.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“International. Facing it from Kalakaua, I looked at the totem poles on my left, garishly painted, contorted faces carved upon them. Farther left, and extending from the Avenue into the grounds, was Don the Beachcomber’s Bora Bora Lounge, in which — according to a sign outside it — was the famous Dagger Bar. On my right was the first of many little stores and shops. This one was Polynesian, crammed with idols, wood-carvings, jewelry in glass cases, a model outrigger canoe in the front window. Beyond it, all around and in the Market Place,”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“Often, when you get a problem down in writing it’s easier to put the separate pieces together and get a logical answer. Besides, once it’s written, you don’t have to hold all the pieces in your conscious mind — and, on many occasions, your subconscious, or unconscious, will dredge up the truth and ease it into your waking thoughts. It’s a technique I’ve often tried; it works. And, I like to think that’s why some people call me the Unconscious Detective.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“Bimbos 365 Club, the theatre-restaurant on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“downtown L.A., I drove along Broadway past Third Street, parked in a lot between Third and Fourth, and walked back to the Hamilton Building”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“yanked out my .38 and stepped back to the corner”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“I’ve always liked the drive from L.A. to Vegas. Through only a few towns after San Bernardino but a lot of flat, dry desert, much of it on four-lane freeways, then, like a concrete and neon oasis: Fabulous Las Vegas.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“A year ago, she’d been photographed in a green and bosky glade, facing a small silver stream that trickled down a gentle slope.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“But from it grew — to prove that you can’t keep a good idea down forever — a kind of fitted, clinging garment called a holomuu. Fitted in a fashion to cause welcome fits, to make eyeballs need Band-Aids, to make the graves of wildly twirling missionaries pop open in censored eruptions. Looking at Loana in her holomuu, which seemed merely to emphasize the proud swelling of breasts, the taut flatness of stomach, the eternally provocative thrust of hip and thigh, I could almost forgive that bloody missionary. Almost.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“Dedicated to all those who are in love with love and have eaten in the Banyan Tree”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“L.A.'s new Central Receiving Hospital is a two-story brick building at 500 Loma Drive. I trotted up”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“He'd hooked me, I am not a man who goes gaga upon touching a rare first edition of Lady Chumley's collected couplets, say, but I was interested. As I took the manuscript from him, he was saying, “Oddly enough, perhaps my greatest interest is the art and literature of India. I have, myself, visited the overpowering caves at Ellora, Ajanta, and Elephanta.” I examined the manuscript with growing interest.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“two turnpike commissioners in Pennsylvania. Even the jury found those boys guilty of conspiracy.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“I'd heard much about the showcase and seen half a dozen dumps like it. It was one of those phonily “artistic” dives, where pale poets quote blank verse to blank people, where bands honk “modern” dissonances as background to sonorous verbiage. Here gathered painters and writers and poets and sculptors and all sorts of people who talked in lower case, like the showcase sign outside. It wasn't much of a place for laughs.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“On my right, beyond the dark waters of the bay dotted with small craft, some anchored and some under way from one end of the harbor toward the other, the lights on the Balboa peninsula glittered like jewels. Not more than a hundred yards from me was a small sandy beach, a few feet beyond it the color and movement of the Balboa Fun Zone. Occasionally the sound of a merry-go-round there mingled raucously with the combo's more delicate harmonies, and lights from the Ferris wheel spun slowly over the amusement booths below it. As I passed the dance area, the music stopped. I walked to the portable bar farther back on the stern and asked the uniformed bartender for another bourbon highball. I got it, went back near the dancers and leaned against the rail, looking them over. The combo swung into Manhattan, and half a dozen couples started dancing.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“This book is dedicated to: Hudson's Bay Scotch Kent Cigarettes and Yuban Coffee without which it might never have been written.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“It was an odd, tense moment. I knew I was going to kiss her. She knew I was going to kiss her. But we were quite still for I don't know how long, just looking at each other, with the tenseness and warmth and intimacy growing between us, and then I pulled her tight against me and her lips parted as I bent my mouth to hers. Her lips were soft, curling and moving beneath mine, sliding and clinging hotly. Her arms tightened behind my neck and I spread my hands open behind and around her small waist, slid them up her back, let my right hand glide on the smooth cloth of her dress until it touched the swelling mound of her breast. As I pulled her to me, she pressed even more tightly against me, her lips writhing more violently, tongue moving and one hand curling against the back of my head. The rest of what happened was simply indescribable. We just sort of fused together, like people melting. It was as if she and I were two flesh magnets, and she laid her North pole up against my South pole and then turned on the juice. About 110 volts, at least, went honking along my spine and out through my ears and hair and everywhere. It was as if I lit up like a Mazda lamp, and if I could have seen myself right then I'll bet I'd have been shocked. That kiss was a trip to a land of new experiences. It was like entering the fourth dimension, or something very close to it. Wherever this was, it wasn't the same old world I'd been used to. I liked it here. This was where I wanted to live. And, friend, it was living.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“I'll let you sweat a while. You ain't gonna know when it's comin’ or from where. You'll just be walking along or riding somewhere—and bing—that's it.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“Ark, he was called. His real name was Hyath Arkajanian, and he was Armenian or Lithuanian or something, I couldn't remember for sure,”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“Hollywood, a few blocks south of the Palladium, and nearly as big as that super-sized dance hall. It was a low, white building, modern, with the front”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three

“Ted Valentine got up from his chair and walked over to me. He stuck out his hand and said, “I'm horribly sorry.”
― Richard S. Prather, Shell Scott PI Mystery Series, Volume Three