“Jennings is too tough and honest a writer to let anyone off her moral hook, even her hero.”

“@The darkest and most complex novel in (the Murdoch) series.”

“Did you ever meet a mother that complained that her child phoned her too often? Me neither.”

“I could envision it all to clearly: Stuart or Debbie finding the dented door off its hinges, lying in the snow. "She came in, ravaged the boy, stole plastic bags, and ripped off the door in her escape," the police would say in the APB. "Probably making her way to bust her parents out of jail.”

“Her hope was to embarrass me. Little does she know, I'm fluent in Asshole.”

“He had let Aunt Peg live in his house and married her, so clearly he had a thing for flaky American types who liked to sneak off in the dead of night. That was, as Ginny remembered it, how America won the Revolution in the first place. The English walked around in bright red coats in straight lines and took breaks for tea, and the Americans snuck around dressed in rags and hid in trees and stole their horses. Or something. Whatever. She had to do this-it was her birthright. It was what George Washington would have wanted.”

“They weren't pressed together as closely as normal, but his shoulder bumped hers, then remained there. It was very subtle, and possibly even accidental, but it was enough.”