“Serial Killer Week got off to an inauspicious start when the opening wine and bean evening was invaded by a former prisoner who misinterpreted the poster, but he was at least able to give us the professional's view of the genre.”

“He was the type of man women said they hated, they absolutely hated, they absolutely and categorically hated, and then they went to bed with him. I was the type of man women said they hated, and then they went home.”

“If you dwell in the darkness, you can see in the dark and look into the light. But in choosing the darkness, you know you are destined to walk alone.”

“Books are precious things and cannot be selected like tinned peas in Tesco.”

“Also, I have a mornid fear of rates, and mice, and nettles and wasps and jagged cans and rotting food and damp newspapers and the unemployed.”

“Cinderella never had it so good. All she got was a lousy coach and breakable shoes.”

“Walters looked quizzically at Morse, who sat reading one of the glossy 'porno' magazines he had brought from upstairs."You still sex-mad, I see, Morse," said the surgeon."I don't seem to be able to shake it off, Max." Morse turned over a page. "And you don't improve much either, do you? You've been examining all our bloody corpses for donkey's years, and you still refuse to tell us when they died.”