Holly

“What’s the name of the loser boyfriend?” “Tom Higgins.” She wrinkles her nose. “He worked at the shoe store out at the Airport Mall.

But she’ll talk to Imani McGuire. Holly is a fan of Michael Connelly’s detective hero, Harry Bosch, and especially of Bosch’s number one maxim: get off your ass and go knock on doors.

leitmotif,

Never answer a suspect’s questions, Bill used to say. They answer yours.

senescence

They watch TV and have their dessert, spooning up a mixture of raspberry sorbet and Peter Steinman’s brains.

“Old age is a time of casting away, which is bad enough, but it’s also a time of escalating indignities.”

“You suggested the beats, so that’s who I’m reading. I got an anthology at the college bookstore. Ginsberg, Snyder, Corso, Ed Dorn… I love him… Lawrence Ferlinghetti…

Her mother’s ironclad dictum, badgered into Holly from the time she was a toddler: What you don’t want to do is what must be done first. Then it’s out of the way. This has stuck with Holly, as many childhood lessons do… for better or worse.