Madison, because it sounds enough like my own surname to make me turn around, and Lexie because when I was a kid that was the name of my imaginary sister.

The cold fact is that every murder I’ve worked was about the killer.

I swing round the newel post at the top and catch a flash of movement in the corner of my eye: the spotted old mirror at the end of the corridor, my face reflected in it, laughing.

I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them any time I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and farther, underground; out of sight and way beyond my control.

The detective’s god is the truth, and you don’t get much higher or much more ruthless than that.

almost everything I said was the truth, just Lexie’s rather than mine.

You can’t make a person, a human being with a first kiss and a sense of humor and a favorite sandwich, and then expect her to dissolve back into scribbled notes and whiskeyed coffee when she no longer suits your purposes. I think I always knew she would come back to find me, someday.

Other Voices: Identity, Concealment and Truth.’

With a stand-alone crime, you have no way of knowing what’s pure chance and what’s a clue,