Series creator Stephen J. Cannell makes a cameo as Matt Savage's creator on the book cover.

Lionel: "My senses were quivering like ten pounds of lime jello on a cracked porcelain plate."

Lionel: Stop treating me like I don't know what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing. This guy's in trouble. We sell a service, he's paying for that service. Okay, he's a little eccentric.
E.L.: Yeah, Jack the Ripper was a little eccentric, my friend.

Lionel: What do you mean a loser? You look at a picture and you say she's a loser? She has sweet eyes. She's sort of trying to smile like things haven't been going quite right.
E.L.: Yeah. Loser.

E.L.: You see, what I'm talking about is a basic philosophical difference. A compendium of evidence seems to support the theory that guns have an inverse rather than direct relationship to life. And a corollary axiom suggests that when one observes a gun in the hands of an unfriendly, one should split to the trenches, hunker down, and be very, very, very quiet.

E.L.: All right. I'm chicken. But I'm a pragmatic chicken, and those are the best kind, you see. Because they never end up swimming with the potatoes and gravy.

Lionel: Bugsy Siegel was tangentially involved.
E.L.: Is he the one with pointy ears and little bushy tail?
Lionel: That's the one.

Susan Lardner: You see, I figure, once the baby is born, well, I'll be okay because, well, I'm studying to be a dental assistant at night school. Well, you can really rake it in with teeth. It's a very lucrative field.

Joe: I mean, I got this kind of thing about broads, you know? I mean, okay, I know I look like the back of a truck. But underneath, I got feelings, well. See, I've been watching what's going on in America, and I'm for this ERW thing.
Lionel: ERA.
Joe: Yeah, that's the one. I mean, I think broads oughta have their rights, you know? I mean, I wouldn't want one flying no aeroplane or nothing, but when it comes to, like, being clerks and stuff, hell's bells, lets get liberal.

Savage Novel: The Shattered Bride