The Simple Art of Murder

The growth of populations has in no way increased the amount; it has merely increased the adeptness with which substitutes can be produced and packaged.

There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that

The murder novel has also a depressing way of minding its own business, solving its own problems and answering its own questions.

If the mystery novel is at all realistic (which it very seldom is) it is written in a certain spirit of detachment; otherwise nobody but a psychopath would want to write it or read it

Murder, which is a frustration of the individual and hence a frustration of the race, may have, and in fact has, a good deal of sociological implication.