To read of a detective's daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy.

Doyle stokes in a thousand shrewd touches with no effort at all. Wonderful.

If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.