An album for me as a teenager in the '70s was a fully formed concept. It was a body of work from an artist I liked or trusted or who excited me. Maybe one of the songs is really poppy and you listen to it on the radio as a hit single and then more of the world is about to find out about this artist by buying the record.

I'm convinced I was the only kid ever who had a Death on the Nile [1978] movie poster and a Murder on the Orient Express [1974] movie poster on his bedroom walls.

Both my parents were big readers. My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma.

You find when you're writing a detective story that you're actually not trying to solve anything. You're trying to stop the reader from solving the puzzle.

I would stay at my grandma's house on my birthday every year and I remember she had a bookshelf of murder mystery books along with really frightening books, like one on Jack the Ripper. She also had a poster of a shark in the closet which also terrified me at the time.

My parents were great parents, but for some bizarre reason they allowed me to watch whatever I wanted on TV, we had cable. And I constantly watched horror movies.

There's a structure to a detective story that I can easily understand. I understand playing that particular game. It's like solving a puzzle. Or creating a puzzle.