Work Lessons:
Everything I Know About Being a the Job, I Learned From P.I. Novels

Okay, I just started this one. I'm looking for words of wisdom, truisms, if you will, garnered from P.I. novels...

WORD ON THE STREET

• "Prostitues and junkies were the best informants on the street. Waitresses, bartenders, UPS drivers, and laborers were pretty good, too. They cost a little more, but whatever the cost...most people, the ones who knew the value of a dollar, had a price."
  (Right As Rain, George Pelecanos)

ON STAKEOUTS

• "And what I tell you about drinking coffee? What you need to be doing, you keep a bottle of water in the car and you sip it, a little at a time, when you get good and thirsty. Coffee runs right through you, man, you know that. What's gonna happen when you got to pee so bad you can't stand it, you get out the car lookin' for some privacy, tryin' to find a tree to get behind, while the subject of your tail is sneaking out the
  back door of his house? Huh? What you gonna do then?"
  (Derek Strange lectures an associate in Right As Rain, George Pelecanos)

ON THE PESKY PROBLEM OF MURDERED PARTNERS

• "When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't matter what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it."
  (Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett)
  .

ON GUNS

• "A dum-dum .30-30 can do a lot of damage. In like a pea, out like a plate."
  (Bart Challis in Death Is For Losers)