It was four in the morning, the hopeless hour when shivering insomniacs inhabit a world of hollow shadow, and existence seems frail and strange. - Robert Galbraith

He had hoped to spot the flickering shadow of a murderer as he turned the file's pages, but instead it was the ghost of Lula herself who emerged, gazing up at him, as victims of violent crimes sometimes did, through the detritus of their interrupted lives.

Frankly, anybody who's going to kill themselves because of a bad review has no business writing a novel in the first place.

Suicides, in his experience, were perfectly capable of feigning an interest in a future they had no intention of inhabiting.