“…in our line of work if we don’t trust our hunches, we’re just shovelin’ regrets to make compost.”

From Jugglers at the Border, by Robert Fate, third in his series about Kristin van Dijk, aka Baby Shark, a young woman who is a pool hustler and private investigator in 1950s Texas. Her partner and mentor Otis Millett delivers this line about being a detective, but it works just as well for writing.

One of the (many) great things about this series is that Fate knows what Texas was like in the pre-feminist ’50s. Kristin, Otis, and their friend Henry, who is Chinese, are all marginal people — like all good detectives they live out on the edge. Unlike Sam Spade, though, who seems to trust no one, they make their own community.