Northern Sweden holds a special kind of magic. It's cold, lonely, and the people are tough and silent, or so the stereotype says. This is Asa Larsson's home turf and I find as much joy in reading her closely observed descriptions of the environment, as in following her intriguing plots.

One of the things I'm really good at is procrastinating.

I've always viewed myself as a brand. When I started 10 years ago, that was very controversial. 'Marketing' and 'PR' were dirty words for the literary world, but that has changed. Once the book is finished, I want as many people as possible to read it.

Don't ever get old. With each year that passes, the old Viking idea of jumping off a cliff to one's death looks better and better. The only thing to hope for is that you get so senile that you think you're twenty years old again. That would be fun to relive.

Crime stories are our version of sitting round a camp fire and telling tales. We enjoy being scared under safe circumstances. That's why there's no tradition of crime writing in countries that have wars.

I do listen to Abba. And a lot of '80s and '90s pop music.

In Sweden, we've moved away from the notion that mothers have some magical, special bond with children.