"Harvey Gatewood had issued orders that I was to be admitted as soon nas I arrived, so it took me only a little less than fifteen minutes to thread my way past the doorkeepers, office boys, and secretaries who filled up most of the space between the Gatewood Lumber Corporation's front door and the president's private office. His office was large, all mahogany and bronze and green plush, with a mahogany desk as big as a bed in the center of the floor.

Gatewood, leaning across his desk, began to bark at me as soon as the obsequious clerk who had bowed me in bowed himself out.

'My daughter was kidnaped last night! I want the gang that did it if it takes every cent I got!'

'Tell me about it,' I suggested.

But he wanted results, it seemed, not questions, and so I wasted nearly an hour getting information that he could have given me in fifteen minutes.

He was a big bruiser of a man, something over 200 pounds of hard red flesh, and a czar from the top of his bullet head to the toes of his shoes that would have been at least number twelves if they hadn't been made to measure.

He had made his several millions by sandbagging everybody that stood in his way, and the rage he was burning up with now didn't make him any easier to deal with.

His wicked jaw was sticking out like a knob of granite and his eyes were filmed with blood -- he was in a lovely frame of mind. For a while it looked as if the Continental Detective Agency was going to lose a client, because I'd made up my mind that he was going to tell me all I wanted to know, or I'd chuck the job.

But finally I got the story out of him."

Dashiell Hammett: "The Gatewood Caper." (1925-27)

"It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in a dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying."

Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep. 1939. Chapter One

"I shook the rain from my hat and walked into the room. Nobody said a word. They stepped back politely and I could feel their eyes on me. Pat Chambers was standing by the door to the bedroom trying to steady Myrna. The girl's body was racking with dry sobs. I walked over and put my arms around her.

'Take it easy, kid,' I told her. 'Come on over here and lie down.' I led her to a studio couch that was against the far wall and sat her down. She was in pretty bad shape. One of the uniformed cops put a pillow down for her and she stretched out.

Pat motioned me over to him and pointed to the bedroom. 'In there, Mike,' he said.

In there. The words hit me hard. In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me through two years of warfare in the stinking slime of the jungle. Jack, the guy who said he'd give his right arm for a friend and did when he stopped a bastard of a Jap from slitting me in two. He caught the bayonet in the biceps and they amputated his arm.

[...]

'Jack, you're dead now. You can't hear me any more. Maybe you can. I hope so. I want you to hear what I'm about to say. You've known me a long time, Jack. My word is good just as long as I live. I'm going to get that louse that killed you. He won't sit in the chair. He won't hang. He will die exactly as you died, with a .45 slug in the gut, just a little below the belly button. No matter who it is, Jack, I'll get the one. Remember, no matter who it is, I promise.'"

Mickey Spillane: I, The Jury. 1947. Chapter One

Nobody ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this. The rain was misty enough to be almost fog-like, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhattan by night was reduced to a few sleepy, yellow lights off in the distance.

Some place over there I had left my car and started walking, burying my head in the collar of my raincoat, with the night pulled in around me like a blanket. I walked and I smoked and I flipped the spent butts ahead of me and watched them arch to the pavement and fizzle out with one last wink. If there was life behind the windows of the buildings on either side of me, I didn't notice it. The street was mine, all mine. They gave it to me gladly and wondered why I wanted it so nice and all alone.

Mickey Spillane: One Lonely Night. 1951. Chapter One.

Some days hang over Manhattan like a huge pair of unseen pincers, slowly squeezing the city until you can hardly breathe. A low growl of thunder echoed up the cavern of Fifth Avenue and I looked up to where the sky started at the seventy-first floor of the Empire State Building. I could smell the rain. It was the kind that hung above the orderly piles of concrete until it was soaked with dust and debris and when it came down it wasn't rain at all, but the sweat of the city.

[...]

Velda's pulse was weak but it was there, and when I lifted her hair there was a huge hematoma above her ear, the skin split wide from the vicious swelling of it. Her breathing was shallow and her vital signs weren't good at all. I grabbed her coat off the rack, draped it around her, stood up and forced the rage to leave me, then found the number in my phone book and dialed it. (TKM 3)

[...]

I was helpless, unable to do anything except kneel there, hold her hand and speak to her. Her skin was clammy and her pulse was getting weaker. The frustration I felt was the kind you get in a dream when you can't run fast enough to get away from some terror that is chasing you. And now I had to stay here and watch Velda slip away from life while some bastard was out there getting farther and farther away all the time.

There were hands around my shoulders that yanked me back away from her and Burke said, 'Come on, Mike, let me get to her.'

I almost swung on him before I realized who he was and when he saw my face he said, 'You all right?'

After a moment I said, 'I'm all right,' and moved back out of the way. (TKM 4)

[...]

My mouth went dry and something felt like it was crawling up my back. The one he had laid on Velda wasn't to knock her out. That one was a killing blow, one swung with deliberate, murderous intent. I looked at the phone again. Meg still hadn't called. (TKM 10)

[...]

Ducking and twisting was automatic and something whispered by over my head. Then a pair of bodies were on me, fists smashing in my kidneys and bouncing off my neck. I rammed my elbow back and felt teeth go under it and the back of my head mashed the guy's nose who was holding me. I was off balance and before I could use my feet another flying pair of arms nailed my legs together in a crude tackle and we all hit the pavement with me on the bottom. My .45 was still tight in the shoulder holster and I felt a hand going under my coat and yanking it clear.

It wasn't a mugging. I felt the needle go into my hip and within seconds drowsiness started.... (TKM 39)

'I walked out of a hospital here in New York and right into a saloon. In less than a month a fine surgeon disintegrated into a total alcoholic with no regrets, no remorse, no aches and pains. My money-hungry family just let me go, took all the assets and never even bothered to report me to the Missing Persons Bureau. After seven years I was declared legally dead, my wife got a young stud to take her to bed, my kids went to pot, to coke and to poverty and all this I found out in the newspapers. Great system, isn't it?'

Mickey Spillane: Black Alley. 1996. Chapter One.