Tag: 2022 Retrospective Page 2 of 4

Things got away from me last month, and I didn’t get anything put together for October. And now I’m late with November, too. I tell you, I’m halfway tempted to fire my staff. But, as I’m the staff, I’d have to replace myself afterward—and that’d be awkward. I might as well just catch up and try to do better at the end of December.

Amari and the Great Game by B.B. Alston

“Amari,’ says Maria. “It’s not your job to save the world every summer,” I don’t have a choice!”

Pretty please?” I ask.

“Fine, fine. Anything for a fellow human.”

I lean in, lowering my voice to a whisper. Just so you know, we don’t usually call each other humans.

Tiny scratches his bald head, his confused eyes flashing bright yellow before changing back. “But why? You are human, yes?”

I nod. “It’s just… we assume everyone we meet is human, so there isn’t any reason to mention it.”

His shoulders droop dramatically. “So many things to remember to fit into human world.”

Working It Out by Jo Platt

I read her text twice, acknowledging it to be actually a rather impressive composition; fewer than one hundred words and with more triggers than a rifle range.

6 Ripley Avenue by Noelle Holten

Just like her, the public were seekers of truth, only sometimes they needed a nudge in the right direction.

Racing the Light by Robert Crais

“Why would Josh ignore her?”

“Because he can. He’s self-absorbed, arrogant, irresponsible, and rotten with privilege.”

“Oh. The usual reasons.”

I wondered what other secrets he kept, and if those secrets had driven him away form his home and his family and Ryan.

Ryan probably wouldn’t like the answer.

Adele probably wouldn’t like the answer, either.

The people who hired me to find someone they love, almost never wanted the truth.

And when I found the truth, I often wished I hadn’t found it.

Pike answered on the first ring. I’ve never called Joe Pike when he didn’t answer the first ring. Pike would have to be dead in a ditch not to answer the first ring, and then he’d probably answer the second ring.

Pike said, “Zongtong.”

I said, “Okay. I give.”

“It’s the word for president in Standard Chinese.”

“You don’t speak Chinese.”

“Jon Stone.”

Of course. Stone was multilingual. He was fluent in Spanish, Korean, Arabic, Russian, and now, apparently, Chinese. And these were only the languages I had personally heard him speak. Some guys were born annoying.

She sounded as lost as yesterday’s kiss…

The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-mo, Chi-Young Kim (Translator)

“How old are you, princess?”

“I’m six.”

Six. Hornclaw already knew, but now that she hears how the girl says it, it feels as though she would remember the girl’s babyish pronunciation forever. The moisture in her words never evaporating.

The Ophelia Network by Mur Lafferty

Frankly it was a little disappointing that the male hackers weren’t hoodie-and-fingerless-glove-wearing unwashed young adults constantly looking over their shoulders. The women weren’t gorgeous Goth chicks, either. Everyone looked boring and normal. Each was dressed professionally, if a little rumpled, as they worked into the night.

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

There is no practice more vexing than that of authors describing in travel for the edification of people who have already traveled in coaches. As I must adhere to form, however, I will simply list a series of phrases for the unlikely reader who has never gone anywhere: thin eggshell dawn-soaked curtains stained with materials unknown to science; rattling fit to grind bones to powder; the ripe stench of horse and driver and bog.

Now I have fulfilled my literary duties…

The girl who had broken off from the line was twelve, with a moon face which was so beautiful I had no notion whether she should be congratulated or censured for taking matters a trifle too far.

I hope that the epitaph of the human race when the world ends will be: Here perished a species which lived to tell stories.

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman

The second date was, if anything, even better than the first. They have been to Brighton to watch a Polish film. Donna hadn’t realized there were Polish films, though obviously there must be. In a country that size, someone is going to make a film once in a while.

Joyce finally cracks. “So where are we off to, then?”

“To meet an old friend of mine,” says Elizabeth. “Viktor.”

“We used to have a milkman called Victor,” says Joyce. “Any chance it’s the same Victor?”

“Very possible. Was your milkman also the head of the Leningrad KGB in the eighties?”

“Different Victor,” says Joyce, “Though they finish milk-round, very early, don’t they? So perhaps he was doing two jobs?”

“It’s the people, in the end, isn’t it?…It’s always the people, You can move halfway around the world to find your perfect life, move to Australia if you like, but it always comes down to the people you meet.”

Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire

“My mind’s on the job,” I said defensively, plucking the cherry from my drink. “Really. I swear.”

“Uh-huh.” Sarah raised an eyebrow. “Do we have have the ‘don’t lie to the telepath’ talk again? It won’t take long. I say ‘don’t lie to the telepath, it never works,’ you glare at me, and then you go find something you can hit.”

“Finding something I can hit is the plan.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said flippantly. “I’m the bad thing that happens to other people.”

Sometimes I think the universe listens for lines like that one, so that it can punish the people who use them.

Screwed by Eoin Colfer

You see, laddie. I’m a businessman. And what we got here is a business opportunity.

Except he says opera-toonity. For some reason he can’t pronounce the word right and I wouldn’t mind but he works it into every second sentence. Irish Mike Madden says opera-toonity more than the Pope says Jesus. And the Pope says Jesus a lot, especially when people sneak up on him.

Little things like that really get to me. I can take a straight sock to the jaw, but someone tapping his nails on a table or repeatedly mispronouncing a word drives me crazy. I once slapped a coffee out of a guy’s hand on the subway because he was breathing into the cup before every sip. It was like sitting beside Darth Vader on his break. And [’ll tell you something else: three people applauded.

He doesn’t know about my aversion to killing people, so is convinced that I can’t let him live. If Shea survives, he is done in this world of shadows, but Freckles would never stop coming. He’s Irish, like me, and we know all about holding grudges. When it comes to vendettas, the Irish make the Sicilians look Canadian.

Desert Star by Michael Connelly

Ballard told herself not to be annoyed with Bosch. She knew that putting him on a team did not make him a team player. That was not in his DNA.

He knew this was a pessimistic view of the world, but fifty years of toiling in the fields of blood had left him without much hope. He knew that the dark engine of murder would never run low on fuel. Not in his lifetime. Not in anyone’s.

Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan

“Sounds like a really good plan to me,” Hadrian declared, “Royce?”
“I like any plan where I don’t die a horrible death.”

“Besides, this shouldn’t be a problem for you, of all people. I am certain you have stolen from occupied homes before.”

“Not ones where the owner can swallow me in a single bite.”

“So we’ll have to be extra quiet now, won’t we?”

Missing Pieces by Peter Grainger

People do not tell the police all they know for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes those reasons are perfectly sound. But we can be certain of one thing: if the police officer concerned suspects you of concealing information, he or she will assume the worst. It comes, as they say, with the territory.

The maverick intuitive geniuses on the television screen are wonderful entertainment, of course. But it’s the people who keep lists that solve cases in the real world.

Dead Lions by Mick Herron

Having a cat is one small step from having two cats, and to be a single woman within a syllable of fifty in possession of two cats is tantamount to declaring life over. Catherine Standish has had her share of scary moments but has survived each of them, and is not about to surrender now.

She started drawing up a mental list of everyone she didn’t trust, and had to stop immediately. She didn’t have all day.

“We don’t like being out of the loop.”

“You’re always out of the loop. The loop’s miles away. Nearest you’ll get to being in the loop is when they make a documentary about it and show it on the History Channel. I thought you were aware of that.”

At the bar he ordered a large scotch for himself, because he wanted to give the impression of being kind of a lush, and also because he wanted a large scotch.

Wistful Ascending by JCM Berne

He was wearing a close-fitting jumpsuit. The yellow was somewhere between neon and actively fluorescent, with accents in a metallic purple rumored to cause an assortment of mental illnesses if a human stared at it too long.

First lesson: Space bears were not sticklers for personal hygiene.

The boy sighed. “My name is long and stupid. But you can call me Rinth.”

“I’m sure it’s not stupid.”

“Amarinthalytics. It sounds like a subject in school that everybody fails.”

“Tell him I said hello. No hard feelings.”

She cocked her head and looked at him with her blank yellow eyes. “Really?”

Rohan shrugged. “I mean, I’m not eager to be best friends, but I also don’t want him worried that I’m going to walk down the hall and pull his testicles out of his body through his ears.”

“That is a very vivid description of vengeance to come from a man with no hard feelings.”

“I’m still an il’Drach Hybrid, you know. Our emotional milieu is mostly made up of hard feelings.

“That is your mantra? ‘Be nice’? Not, for example, ‘Be good’?”

“Yeah. Once you try to do the right thing, the moral thing, you find all sorts of ways to justify whatever. Oh, this action here is cruel, but it’s for the greater good, so it’s right. But you can’t argue with nice.”

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

It’s the lass full week of October, it’s probably past time for me to get this out of the “Drafts” folder.

Be the Serpent by Seanan McGuire

But that’s Faerie for you. Making sense is something that happens to other people.

It felt like I was standing outside this scene and watching it unfold, like none of this had anything to do with me. Like I should have been able to smile politely, say, “No, thank you,” and walk away, leaving everything exactly as it was before I got out of bed this morning.

Travel by Bullet by John Scalzi

“In this case something called ‘Magic Beanz.’ And that’s spelled like whoever named it failed the third grade.

I nodded at this. “It’s not a legitimate cryptocurrency if it’s not badly spelled. ”

“Drive me nuts,” Mason said. “It’s like people naming their kid Ashley or Braden, but then spelling the name with six “Y”s. It doesn’t make the kid special, it just means they won’t be able to spell their own name until they’re in high school.”

The Days of Tao by Wesley Chu

Once you spend three thousand years in the same place, you are pretty much done with it forever.

An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris

It’s always something to recognize, how still the dead are. Ten minutes ago he’d moved and breathed and thought and wanted, and he’d done his best to kill us. Now all that didn’t matter to him.

Snowstorm in August by Marshall Karp

“It’s called a multipurpose subsea vehicle,” our pilot, Captain Jim Charles, told us, “but I like to think of it as the kind of watercraft Dr. Frankenstein would have built if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with dead bodies.”

The line was probably a standard part of his orientation speech, but he delivered it so deadpan that both Redwood and I responded with the genuine laughs he was expecting.

Dead Man’s Hand by James J. Butcher

It felt unreal that she could be dead. She had always been so powerful, so sure, so wise. Not to mention so paranoid that she did her own dental work.

He took a breath to brace himself for what came next. He could show no fear, no hesitation , and most of all, no pride. You can’t have pride and appropriately handle kids at the same time. It was some kind of universal, or perhaps cosmic, rule.

…coaxing the jeep to life. It sounded like it should be in a hospital bed surrounded by its loved ones, but it started moving somehow…It didn’t help that all he could smell was whiskey and cigarettes, and whatever the opposite of that new-car smell was.

Hell and Back by Craig Johnson

Most live in fear of dying alone, but it was something he understood—that there are things that you can only do by yourself, besides, we are never truly alone. There’s always something out there waiting, it is the nature of life and the nature of death.

For We Are Many by Dennis E. Taylor

“The cat’s A.I. was realistic, right down to the total lack of loyalty.”

“Just when you start to get ahead in the rat race, the universe delivers bigger rats.”

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

I’m a couple of days late with this, it took a bit of choosing (and I had to verify selections from a couple of ARCs, too). Here are the lines from August that really stood out to me.

Hell of a Mess by Nick Kolakowski

Don’t worry, sweetie, she’d told him on the way out the door. Anything goes wrong, I got the gun!

What about not killing? he’d retorted— because she was trying to become more Zen, right? Kinder and gentler and all that other crap?

I’ll just shoot them in the kneecap! she said before the door slammed behind her.

His wife had a funny concept of Zen.

The assassin raised a hand. “Sorry, I have this medical condition, it makes me draw the nearest firearm whenever I hear the word ‘Bitcoin.’”

“When did you become an explosives expert?” the assassin asked.

“I saw ‘The Hurt Locker’ at least twice,” Bill said, snipping a wider gap.

Summerland by Michael Chabon

The fundamental truth: a baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.

Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker

I was in the waiting area, drinking from a bottle of mineral water when Art first walked in. He wore a forest green velvet jacket and bright mustard trousers, and darted through the clinic’s duck-egg like a greenfinch. The world didn’t dim around him, my heart didn’t skip a beat, but I felt as if I could know him, and could anticipate his nature if only I knew his voice. He sat directly opposite me on a plush red chair, and after a single scan around the waiting room, picked up a copy of National Geographic and started to read. I knew who he was, even if he didn’t immediately know me. Art was at once a mystery and a map.

I purged the kitchen of potted carcasses. Despite them all sitting in a row and sharing the same light, each plant had died in its own discrete way. Most had shrivelled back into a gnarled stump, and others had become mushy, sinking down like a creamy concertina. Aubrey’s succulent had finally given up its last leaf, and the stalk stood obscenely naked, coiling towards the sun like an earthworm. I tossed them all into the composter and left the empty pots by the back door. I’d replace them with artificial plants later…

Plugged by Eoin Colfer

Everyone wants to kill me lately. It’s enough to make a fellow paranoid.

I am not qualified to deal with this. Why does everyone I meet seem to have mental problems?

Ah…but did they have mental problems before meeting you? Who’s the common denominator here, Dan?

I do not have mental problems! I say to the voice in my head, perfectly aware how damning it would sound were I to say it aloud.

The great Stephen King once wrote don’t sweat the small stuff, which I mulled over for long enough to realise that I don’t entirely agree with it. I get what he means: we all have enough major sorrow in our lives without freaking out over the day-today hangnails and such, but sometimes sweating the small stuff helps you make it through the big stuff.

When Sorrows Come by Seanan McGuire

Faerie’s relationship to physics is often casual at best, and sometimes it consists of Faerie promising to call when physics knows it never will.

Congratulations on the occasion of your marriage, and may the blessings piled upon your house be so vast the roof is in danger of collapse before you can get the wedding party to safety.

Grave Reservations by Cherie Priest

If they couldn’t agree on which Sci Fi memes to deploy in conversation, how could they work together long enough to fix anything, solve anything, save anybody?

Out of Spite, Out of Mind by Scott Meyer

Shooting yourself in the foot has the same effect whether you do it to get out of the army or to kill a mosquito on your shoe.”

Case of the Missing Firefly by Chris McDonald

If this were a novel, Adam perhaps might’ve realised that he’d been holding his breath the whole time. As it was, his respiratory system had carried on as normal, collecting oxygen without his explicit command.

The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu

She had wanted to refuse the assignment but the terms he offered were too good to pass up: tax exemption for life and not going to jail for refusing her duke. Taishi was not a big fan of taxes or imprisonment.

Taishi had been so busy she kept forgetting to tell Faaru to put out a call for educators. The boy needed to know more than eight ways to throw a punch. She needed to hire teachers: philosophers, mathematicians, politicians … and probably someone to teach him how to dress himself. He would need to be versed in diplomacy, cultures, logistics, art, and etiquette. Half of a leader’s job was to not be an idiot.

The seconds ticked by. Taishi bided her time. In battle, only fools hurried, and they either learned or died learning.

Jian remembered [redacted] death-punching him in the chest, his veins feeling like they were scalding in hot oil. Everything was hazy after that. To be honest, part of him felt he owed his former master an apology: No one ever believed any war artist who claimed to know some form of death punch. Out ofall his masters, only Luda had boasted that knowledge, and the rest had teased him relentlessly about it. Being on the receiving end of a death touch was a pretty awful way to confirm its existence.

Unlike many war artists who had put forth tremendous effort to maintain a stoic expression at all times, Taishi suffered no qualms about vocalizing her feelings, and she preferred those under her to do the same. It was better to show fear than false courage. A soldier who showed fear—in moderation—was an alert and sharp soldier, and more likely to follow orders. Someone who was busy acting brave was preoccupied with the wrong thing.

Haaren leaned over the side and studied the row of vendor stalk “Everything is so cheap.”

“That’s because everyone’s so broke,” said Koteuni, “I’ve never seen so many unemployed soldiers and war artists waiting around in one place.”

“That’s what those dummies get for winning the war,” replied Qisami.

Burandin pointed at a recruiter off to the side enlisting soldiers. The crowd surrounding him looked like piranhas during a feed. “The army’s mustering again.”

Koteuni snorted. “To fight whom? There’s no one left.”

He shrugged. “There’s always someone to fight.”

Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley

When Aja was a baby I’d watch her sleep, sometimes for an hour or more. Her face changed expressions with whatever dream she was having or with anything shifting in the room or inside her. She made errant noises and reached out now and again.

Sleeping, it seemed to me, was an act of innocence. That’s why I stayed awake after almost murdering [redacted ]. I knew that peaceful slumber was for babies, whereas only nightmares awaited a man like me.

One thing I had learned in high school was that in sports you always had to move in a direction that your opponent did not expect. From Ping-Pong to prizefighting, the man with the unexpected moves was the player most likely to win.

Police work is a kind of intellectual sport, like Go or chess. And sometimes you have to make a move to fool yourself, a move that will keep you from putting yourself in the enemy’s line of fire.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)

Here’s a collection of my favorite phrases/sentences/paragraphs from last month that I haven’t already used for something. (I will skip most audiobooks, my transcription skills aren’t what they should be. But when I try, the punctuation, etc. is just a guess).

Songbird by Peter Grainger

“How old is Michelle?” It doesn’t matter how you ask the question, whichever tense you go with sounds wrong. Reeve had concluded that to say “was” now, would be too soon, that’s all

The [remark about] fast cars were true without a doubt. He’d been in one or two of those with Catherine, and surviving the experience was enough to make you reconsider your rejection of the Christian faith.

There had been times, and not a few of them, when Waters had thought, “Why doesn’t he let that go? Why go out on a limb for something trivial? For some small point of principle?” But there’s no such thing as a small point of principle, principles are big things. If principles aren’t worth fighting for, what else is? What else matters?

A World Without “Whom”: The Essential Guide to Language in the BuzzFeed Age by Emmy J. Favilla

Warning: Here’s where I might start to get a little emotional. Because what’s more beautiful than a strategically placed em dash? Answer: interspecies friendships, random acts of kindness, Oscar Isaac, an empty subway car during rush hour that isn’t the result of a putrid mystery substance permeating the air. But the em dash is not too far behind!

Face it: You hate whom. If you don’t, you’re likely a liar or someone with an English degree who actually still really hates whom but can’t bear to come to terms with your traitorous hatred for fear of your overpriced degree being snatched from your cold, dead hands, never to be seen again. In casual conversation we end sentences with prepositions and we never use whom. It’s a fact. And if you do use whom in conversational speech, you will never see yourself on an invite to a dinner party at my place. Mostly because I’m not the type of person who has dinner parties or uses whom.

The Botanist by M.W. Craven

‘I didn’t want you thinking I’d panicked. I didn’t want you thinking less of me.’

Poe was lost for words. ‘Why would I think less of you?’ he said eventually. ‘You’d just found your father’s corpse. There was a bullet hole in his head. If you can’t panic then, when can you?’

The Law by Jim Butcher

I’d been feeling sorry for myself, which is about the most useless thing you can feel: it doesn’t do a damned thing for you. You don’t feel any better, you don’t get any better, and you’re too busy moping to do anything to actually make your life any better.

The Self-Made Widow by Fabian Nicieza

He wore a faded Creed T-shirt from their 1999 Human Clay tour, which Michelle assumed he would never have worn had he known he’d be dying in it.

Brianne was smart, but she was intellectually lazy, mostly as a result of all the years spent being intellectually lazy.

She started to walk away when he said, “Andrea, since we’re still getting to know each other, for the record, I’ve watched IEDs blow up my friends and I’ve been shot five times, with my vest stopping only three of those.”

He let that sink in for a second.

“You have to come at me with something much better than veiled threats to my job.”

“Filed for future reference, Chief,” she said. “Threats to your wife and kids it is, then. . . .”

Derek and Molly didn’t have a fantasy marriage with wind chimes resonating as they pranced about a grassy field like a pharmaceutical commercial distracting you while the rapid-fire voiceover warned you about side effects like rectal bleeding.

Andrea and Jeff had gone to the preserve only once. He didn’t like nature unless it came with a nineteenth hole, and she didn’t like it without concrete sidewalks and blaring taxi horns.

[redacted]’s eyes looked panicked while the other looked homicidal. It gave him a Bill the Cat quality from the old Bloom County strip.

How the Penguins Saved Veronica by Hazel Prior

So this is what dying is like. Who’d have thought it’d be so frustrating and boring? I’d like it to be over, but no doubt it will drag itself out as long as possible, just like life. How extremely tedious.

With Grimm Resolve by Jeffrey H. Haskell

“Good job, sir,” she said. She knew how fragile officers’ egos were, and it was helpful to reassure them they could find their butt with both hands and a map.

“I don’t really know how to explain it sir.”

“Take your time,” Jacob said with a grin. “It’s only a hitherto unknown stellar phenomenon. You can have a few seconds to figure out how to describe it.”

Jacob took his seat, glancing at the readiness board on his MFD. The ship was at a hundred percent and they were either going to enter the starlane in less than half an hour, or they would die.

Personally, he hoped for the former.

Whispers in the Dark by Chris McDonald

I’d even been interviewed about the case by a petty criminal, from the back seat of the police car on our way back to the station. He told me his mates won’t believe him that he was arrested by THE Erika Piper, and asked could he have a picture to prove it. I’d impolitely declined.

He has me where he wants me. He knows that I am hanging on his every word and he is revelling in it. Though, I swear if he says ‘you see’ again, I will not be responsible for my actions. Liam can sense my mood and intervenes.

As the lift doors close, I can’t help but think I’d been quick to condemn the reception area. Compared to the interior of the lift, it could be confused for a fancy Mayfair hotel. The buttons on the console are coated in a sticky film and Liam does the chivalrous thing, stretching his coat over his hand and prodding the button with supersonic speed.

Ghost of a Chance by Dan Willis

“Is that serious?”

“Very,” Kellin said.

“Untreated it can cause brain injury and even death.”

“What do I do for that?”

“Death?” Dr. Kellin smirked. “Nothing.”

“You just reminded me that there’s a corollary to that formula.”

Alex sat up, interested.

“If you eliminate the impossible and nothing remains,” he said, taking his cigar out of his mouth and considering it.

“Yes?” Alex prompted.

“Then some part of the impossible, must be possible.”

The Deepest Grave by Harry Bingham

How does anyone think that ‘attempted murder’ counts the same as actual murder? They shouldn’t even call it ‘attempted’: that’s just a way to flatter failure. The crime is as close as you can get to the opposite of murder.

The thing is, if you kill someone in these extravagant ways, you’re usually trying to send a message. So when the Ku Klux Klan strung people up from trees, they were carefully sending a message. To black people: stay in your place. To white people: this is the way we run things here. None of that civil rights nonsense, or else… A loathsome message, brutally delivered. But clear. Horribly clear.

Owen is probably a good human being and one more likely to be summoned before the Holy Throne than I am, but, Lord help me, the man is boring. Just talking to him makes me want to push plastic forks into my eyes.

The man swears, disappears, then the snout of a shotgun emerges, and Bowen comes back towards me a lot faster than he left. We shelter behind the slab of a tombstone.

‘What now?’

I shake my head.

Nothing.

Shotgun versus shouting: shotgun wins. They teach you that in the police.

Two walls lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves. Katie starts looking at book titles. No reason, except that’s what people like me and Katie do when we walk into a room with books.

We talk to someone at Google about it. He sounds like a real human being–albeit a Californian one whose hair is probably full of sunshine and organic hair product.

Time.

The fourth dimension.

One of my favourite dimensions. One that brings all the good stuff, even if she brings more than her share of the crappy stuff too. But there are times she’s out of her depth. Times when she shunts one second into the void, over the edge of the present and away– then, blow it, the next second to come along looks exactly the same. And the next and the next.

Thousands of seconds, all alike.

He has that Metropolitan Police we- never- screw- up tone about him which is deeply comforting, until you remember that the Met screws up just as much as anyone else and maybe more.

Biting.

That sounds a bit girly, of course. Scratching, biting, pulling hair. Playground stunts that only girls ever pull. Girls with tears and bunches and grubby knees.

But there’s playground biting and real biting.

My fighting instructor, Lev, once told me that the human jaw can exert as much as a hundred kilos of force. I slightly doubt that my own pearly whites can inflict that much pressure, but they’re still handy. The trick– another of Lev’s much- reiterated nuggets– is to bite with the molars not the incisors. You get double or quadruple the amount of force, and the victim’s area of muscle damage is that much greater.

‘Take the biggest bite you can. Bite hard. And don’t stop. The more your man struggles, the more hurt you do.’

Wise advice.

A dog handler once told me that sniffer dogs aren’t recruited for their powers of smell. ‘They can all smell well enough. Asking them to follow a trail is like asking you to pick a red ball from a basket full of green ones. The only issue is whether the dog understands what you’re asking and feels like helping.’

On Eden Street by Peter Grainger

There are lines, and you cross them at your peril. But the closer one gets to them, the more wavy and broken those lines become. And the longer one does this job, the more the realization dawns that every investigation is unique–barely any of them fit the theories you’re taught in the lecture room.

(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)