11.   Iain Pears, the best-selling detective fiction writer who lives in Oxford, said by telephone that he had just missed witnessing the theft.

12.   Increasingly it seems as though the format of detective fiction has become so preordained that it virtually defies re-invention.

13.   Molly has all the traits of a great detective fiction heroine.

14.   No books are more easily parodied, and there is more rubbish and nonsense in the subgenre than in any other field of mystery and detective fiction.

15.   Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett now are ennobled as masters of detective fiction, but with no other companions in the pantheon.

16.   Seventy-four-year-old doyenne of English detective fiction.

17.   Somehow being in England makes mystery and detective fiction seem so much more important.

18.   The best detective fiction does that too.

19.   The best detective fiction testifies to this thought, rooting crimes and criminals in recognizable environments.

20.   The book reads like good detective fiction, peppered with tough language and pervaded by suspense.