“She thought of sex with Miles. It had last happened three weeks previously. His performance was as predictable as a Masonic handshake.”

“AS IT TURNED out, Rylann wasn’t quite as good as she’d thought she was.Over the last five years she’d prosecuted cases, she’d become quite skilled at reading defendants and their lawyers at the initial courtappearance. Given Quinn’s obvious nervousness, she’d originally predicted that his lawyer would be calling her within two weeks to negotiate aplea agreement.Instead, it took him two weeks and three days to make that call.”

“A brick, in the hands of a Mason, could be used to cover up and hide a secret handshake.
”

“Betsy hadn't had sex, actual; sex-sex, full sex, in two hundred and fifty-three days. She decided on her thirty-seventh birthday that she wouldn't sleep with anyone unless it was in the context of a committed relationship which had some sort of future, and she was only gradually coming to the realization of what happens when a woman her age makes a decision like that: she never has sex again.”

“Love lasts a long time but burning desire lasts two to three weeks.”

“Indeed, for the last three years, he had carefully avoided her, as a result of the natural cowardice so characteristic of the stronger sex...”