Quotes from the 'March Violets' by Philip Kerr

Although it's a work of fiction, telling a private detective during pre-war Nazi era, some of the sentences deserved attention.

You always eliminate the obvious. That’s fundamental to detection. (p. 133)

‘It’s just typical of the bloody Nazis,’ said Inge, ‘to build the People’s roads before the People’s car.’ (p. 160)

Sometimes he managed to catch himself; but this time he fell into a spasm of coughing that sounded hardly human at all, more like someone trying to start a car with an almost flat battery, and as usual it seemed to afford him no relief whatsoever. (p. 40)

In my experience you can never flatter any woman too much, just as you can never give a dog too many biscuits. (p. 49)

I’m not much interested in The Past and, if you ask me, it is this country’s obsession with its history that has partly put us where we are now: in the shit. (p. 56)

the Social Democrats had their clenched fist raised high above the head; the Bolshies in the KPD had their clenched fist raised at shoulder level; the Centrists had their two-fingered, pistol-shaped hand signal, with the thumb cocked; and the Nazis had fingernail inspection. (p. 62)