I read very little contemporary anything.
It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.
I invented the historical spy novel.
My novels are about the European reality, not about chases. You want chases, get somebody else's books.
The best Paris I know now is in my head.
I grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers, I'm a genre writer.