Some quotes from Edmund Crispin's golden age Gervase Fen mysteries

[cimorene]

• [T]he project sounded at once tedious and insubstantial, like ectoplasm at a séance.



• Mudge went esoterically about his business.



• “The plural of mouse is mice,” Fen observed, “but I doubt if it can be maintained that the plural of spouse is…” He broke off.



• "I’ve just developed the first symptoms of an idea—though it probably won’t come to anything.”



• "[M]yself went over the study with what writers inexperienced in hyphenation call a fine tooth-comb[…]"



• "I haven’t the slightest objection to terrorizing innocent householders so long as it’s in a good cause…"



• said Humbleby with all the savagery of a cornered humanist,