Stringer on being a Private Detective:

Those were the days when I assumed that being a private detective in a city where everyone is crooked was going to be the easiest job in the world. It would simply be a matter of matching the crime with the culprit, I thought, and then I'd be home and dry. A few successful cases, I thought, and the money would be flowing in. But it's not like that. You see, for every person who has a problem they'd like you to clear up, there's at least one more who would much rather that you simply left well alone. Then you've got to quickly sum up which of the two someones concerned is likely to hurt you the least when crunch time comes. If you don't get that right, then there could be no end to the pain and suffering. And me, well, I like to keep pain and suffering to an absolute minimum, if I can help it. That's just the way I am.

from The Word on the Street

Stringer on Jefford:

There's not much I can say about Jefford, other than the fact that he adequately fulfils all the basic requirements for being a good barman - that is, he provides decent booze at a decent price and he's happy to listen patiently whilst his inebriated customers relate their tragic life stories, often in increasingly tedious detail. I've heard that he also runs a profitable little sideline as a receiver of stolen goods, if you're interested in that sort of thing. And with Mr. Jefford being such a generous soul, he sometimes provides me with information merely on the strength of me having bought a drink from him. Just as long as I actually pay for the drink, that is.

from The Word on the Street

Stringer on Foreign Languages:

There is something particularly humbling about listening to a person speaking in a language that you don't understand. Although it sounds like nothing but gibberish, you know that there has to be a meaning in there somewhere; it's just that you're too damn ignorant to know what it is. This girl knew, however; and she seemed to be using it to tell a pretty elaborate story. With this language she could buy things, seduce a lover, raise a rebellion, put forward a philosophical argument, recite poetry - but to me it was just a collection of noises.

from The Word on the Street

Stringer on 'Paradise':

I had been holding off describing the city to you because I knew that it would make me depressed. Leave it to their imagination, I thought. After all, everyone knows what a city's like. You know the streets, the noises, the colours, the grime, the smell, the smoke. You've already got it in your own head; you don't need me to give you chapter and verse. Well, maybe some nomad in the back end of the Gobi Desert doesn't know what a city is like, but I'm sure that even he's able to use his imagination... So it's a city, pretty much like any other city you've seen or visited, where everyone is up to their neck in something illegal, illicit or immoral. Some do it because they need to, the rest because it's fun.

from The Word on the Street

Stringer on Morality:

When I started in this business, I made it a rule that I wasn't going to make moral judgements. Someone pays me to gather information for them, and whatever they subsequently did with that information is entirely their affair - nothing to do with me, squire; I'm just doing my job. The only occasions when I might actually lift a finger and say: 'Hang on a moment there, guv,' would be if they weren't planning to pay me for the information I'd provided, or if they were trying to plant the blame for some mischief they were contemplating onto me.

Now, though, I was starting to realise that life was not always going to be that simple...

from Fool's Mate

Stringer on Gambling:

This is what I know about the economics of gambling. The bookmaker takes an amount x in bets from his punters, and pays out an amount y in winnings. The difference between x and y buys him a sheepskin coat, a Jaguar car, a large house in the country and generally puts his children through boarding school. So, you don't need to be a mathematical genius to calculate that however much x you put into the equation, the amount y you get out will always be less. That's why I never bet.

Well, almost never. The promise of instant riches can be an insidious form of temptation, as I'm sure some wise man once said. If he didn't, then he damn well ought to have done.

from The Dog That Didn't Bark

Stringer on Clues and Red Herrings:

If the author of a detective novel makes a clue really obvious, then reader is probably going to assume that the clue is actually a red herring, so the author could be really tricky and make that clue a genuine clue after all because he knows that the reader is likely to assume that it's a red herring. Or it could be the subtle clue that the reader has cleverly picked up and thinks is genuine turns out to be the red herring. Either way the reader is mislead.

Though of course the writer could, instead of trying to hide the genuine clue, make it so obvious that the reader doesn't even notice that it is a clue. Now that's really devious.

from The Dog That Didn't Bark