The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind.

All novels are about crime. You'd be hard pressed to find any novel that does not have an element of crime. I don't see myself as a crime novelist, but there are crimes in my books. That's the nature of storytelling, if you want to reflect the real world.

If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there's just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing.

Obviously you have to make a profit to put out a newspaper. I'm not an idiot. But when the margins are in excess of 25 per cent you're talking about greed.

I got overwhelmed by the magnitude of the celebrity culture in America. My background is as a news journalist, and newsrooms in the US are shrinking - investigation teams are being terminated or shrunk on newspapers all around the country. The one aspect that's expanded is coverage of celebrity culture.

...Right now there's a pair of bad cops on their way out here to shoot me." "You don't know that." "Yeah, you're right," Stranahan said. "They're probably just collecting Toys for Tots. Now go.

Everybody's idea of a great book is different, of course. For me it's one that makes my jaw drop on every page, the writing is so original.