Women liked Strike – she had come to realize that over the months they had worked together. She had not understood the appeal when she had started working for him. He was so very different from Matthew.

Charlotte had had the kind of beauty that made men forget themselves midsentence, that stunned them into silence.

So I’ve been forced to the conclusion,” said Strike, “that the Bombyx Mori everyone’s read is a different book to the Bombyx Mori Owen Quine wrote.

The dead girl had her glimpse of earthly paradise: littered with designer goods, and celebrities to sneer at, and handsome drivers to joke with, and the yearning for it had brought her to this: seven mourners, and a minister who did not know her name.

No milk, gone out for breakfast, then to Hamleys, want to beat crowds. PS Know who killed Quine.

If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.” Strike.

Birthdays in Lucy’s world were always celebrated, never forgotten: there must be cake and candles and cards and presents; time must be marked, order preserved, traditions upheld.

Keeping busy was the only answer: action had always been his drug of choice.

Frankly, anybody who’s going to kill themselves because of a bad review has no business writing a novel in the first place.

Strike knew how deeply ingrained was the belief that the evil conceal their dangerous predilections for violence and domination. When they wear them like bangles for all to see, the gullible populace laughs, calls it a pose, or finds it strangely attractive.