Reading Crime Stories Gifts

'Quick, grab him. There's a price on his head.'

'Are you the gentleman who called the police?'

'I cut a deal. Seven years. Even less if I ever remember to mail in this ‘Get two years off' rebate coupon.'

We're here at House of Java cafe at an all-too-familiar scene. House of Java.net Cybercafe. Tommy Jones, a local boy, has been caught stealing a scone. A minor offense? Not to the cafe's proprietor. He's demanding the boy be sentenced as an adult. But I'm eight! Wahhh! Add a year to the sentence for whining and crying.

Round up all the king's horses and all the king's men for questioning.

"Talk, Wallace - where'd you hide the loot?"

'You know bank pens never work. Why didn't you write the holdup note before we left?!'

It was my story. A murder mystery. A who-done-it-and-got-away-with-it-until-he-wrote-about-it.

'I'm sure that the autopsy will confirm it was a suicide.'

The Philip Marlow family

'Mark my word, Walters, this is no ordinary virus.'

"So, just to be clear: the 'voices inside your head' told you to launder the money from forfeited law enforcement seizures in exchange for federal tax breaks for your Uncle Mark in Costa Rica?"

'I don't know officer: They all look alike to me...'

"Then leave the horses head in the Futon." Middle-class mafia

'During the break, my client stole my wallet.'

'All right pal, just hand over the nose and nobody gets hurt.'

"You're not grandma at all! In fact, I think this is a case of identity theft!"

"It was Saturday night. The clock on my office wall showed the time to be eleven-forty-five. There are times when a private eye does not necessarily feel like being a private eye. This was one of those times. The elevator door down the hall clanked open with a clank familiar to anyone on the fourth floor who had had an office on the fourth floor for as long as I had had an office on the fourth floor. Footsteps came down the darkened hall and stopped outside my door. They were the footsteps of a

''Rumplestiltskin' sounds like an ALIAS to me!'

Mafia Short-Term Memory Clinic. 'Fuhgettaboutit.'

'Why is it always about me?'

Dog detectives

"Damn it—I told them I was too well known for undercover work!"

"By Ned, you're right, inspector—the body has been moved."

"Say, Chief, any progress on the pencil case?"

"Paper or plastic?"

The old good-cop, psycho-cop routine.

Mafia Family Life: 'I'm sorry dear - but I had to bring some work home!'

Fish mobsters.

"I did, boss, I swear, I buried him myself."

"We've hit the jackpot! It's Ed Sheeran's songwriting formula."

"Daddy, can I have a pony killed?"

The Meeting

Cop Shop/Fake evidence/Plant now for spring.

"Then I tried the move from business casual to white collar crime."