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.

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.

Scandinavian crime fiction has become a great success all across the world and rightfully so. Sjowall and Wahloo ushered in a whole generation of Swedish crime writers, many of whom are now available in English.

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

The pace of Swedish crime fiction is slower - Stieg Larsson's the exception. And I think we use the environment more.

People in Sweden talk a lot about the weather - how much we hate it. But Finns get more depressed.