...in his atelier (pg. 291) -- an artist's or designer's studio or workroom.
Like my pal Scanlon says, 'The camel shits. The caravan moves on.' (pg. 221) -- That's life!
"the lid on the gas tank was controlled by the door locks. To fill it with gas, you had to unlock the car doors. (pg. 257 -- Rich art dealer, can't afford to have someone hook up a separate switch for the gas filler lid?
"What the drop?"..."Thirty feet, easy." (pg. 53)
...slamming into the the fan casing at about a hundred twenty miles an hour. (pg. 88) -- I couldn't believe a body would accelerate that quickly in so short a distance, but I did the math, and it seems to be correct. Huh.
"Looks like about fifty-five volts of electricity ran up the side of the...manhole cover... More than enough to kill you." (pg.92)
"...Usually it's only twenty or thirty volts, enough to give you a good scare..." (pg. 93) -- Hey, it's the amperage, not the voltage!
harebag cops (pg. 297) -- A bag for putting dead rabbit into? A picture at a Hash-related blog: http://pwoodford.net/hashblog/?p=1357
...backset of the RMP... -- (pg. 2) Just what RMP (Radio Motor Patrol car) stands for is not explained until page 207!
This is a gorge you're looking at (pg. 161) -- Near as I can figure, the highest point around here is 50 feet high. Quibbler as I am, that's not much of a gorge to me.
As usual, interesting history stuff, including the High Bridge over the Harlem River.
on the hustings (pg. 248)-- The activities involved in political campaigning.
A TON of interesting historical stuff about New York and the New York Public Library is in here. I learned a bunch of stuff. Many of the locations can be viewed in Google Street View.
In an email query to the NYPL I found out that the call numbers in the research libraries are unique for each item, pretty much, and so the question on page 144, "So how does the clerk know which copy of Alice In Wonderland to fetch?", probably could have been answered by "The call number from the catalog".
deaccession (pg. 82) -- To sell or otherwise dispose of an item in a collection.
welsh (pg. 117) -- To avoid payment.
faites comme chez vous (pg. 121) -- Make yourself at home.
puttanesca sauce (pg. 123) -- The word puttanesca is derived from puttana, a colloquial term for 'prostitute.'
exsanguination (pg. 127) -- To be drained of blood.
hondel (pg. 221) -- Yiddish, to bargain.
À tout a l'heure, ma princesse (pg. 265) -- See you soon, my princess.
profiterole (pg. 275) -- A cream puff.
whole magilla (pg. 357) -- Derived from the Hebrew word Megillah, a word for scroll, it now means "the whole thing, all that can be expected".
"You can't close the public library."
"faster than you can say Dewey decimal system, lady."
ratiocination (pg. 287) -- The process of exact thinking.
buried the lede (pg. 338) -- The introductory section of a news story that is intended to entice the reader to read the full story.
Penikese Island (pg. 340) -- Looked it up on Google Maps to see what it looks like.
On page 349 Mike says, "You got a gun I can borrow for an hour or two?"
On page 359 Mike draws his Glock.
On page 358 Alex is wearing moccasins. Moccasins?
faience carving of the Sphinx (pg. 75) A type of tin-glazed earthenware ceramic.