My feet crunched over dry hickory leaves. Wood rangers had stapled up Smokey Bear (“Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires!”) signs along the state roads. One cigarette butt flicked out a passing car window and there’d be real hell to pay.

Somebody should have taken him to a stationary store and pointed out the difference between an envelope and a whore.

In near panic, I craned my neck to gaze over the cabin’s roofline a bursting fireball.

Just the night before, a puma’s howl had set a chill at my spine and, man, life didn’t get any richer than that.

He stood at the entrance to the kitchen, blocking my path to the front door like the Berlin Wall. -- Least Wanted

I've never been a morning person, and if it's one thing I don't need before my first cup of coffee, it's a visit from the cops. But at eight forty-five on a Friday morning, two of them waited for me at my law office.

How the Hell is it we go to pick up Jenna Jameson and end up with the fucking chick from those Kill Bill movies?

Personality is a piece of paper that folds in to conceal different sides and display others, like an Origami

I let my gaze travel out the picture window. Unlike at my old doublewide trailer perched on the fringe of a played out quarry, here I owned a real yard with real grass that screamed for mowing each Monday a.m. I sat at the kitchen table, cooling off from just having finished this week's job. Yes, here in 2005, I was a full-fledged suburbanite, but I'd been called worse.

Quote taken from Chapter 1: That's the idea. Listen, Frank, this one is different. She's a keeper." He let that part gel in me. "Get your head screwed on straight and move to Richmond. You hate it living in Pelham.

I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.

Get a load of this, Frank.” Gerald Peyton’s pause set off his pronouncement. “She is expecting to get a wedding ring.”“That’s understandable,” I said, unsure how he could afford a ring on what our firm cleared. Diamond rings—more sold in December than in any other month of the year—went for a cool grand per karat. Weeks ago, I’d priced them—again—for my domestic situation. “What seems to be the problem?”“That’s a big leap for me to make.”“I expect you’ll make it with room to spare.

A diamond wedding ring, you say?”I studied his face. Was he putting me on? He looked earnest. “As any guy would expect, a diamond is what she’s after,” I said. “Did you hold out hope you’d get by for anything less?