I think graphic novels are closer to prose than film, which is a really different form.

Because I write a book a year, I always want to do one other project every year that's stimulating in a different way. It means you can be working but not using up your prose juice, you know?

To have a very strong opinion all the time is corrosive to a person's intellect. It becomes your default position.

I'm always represented as a bit of a class warrior - a bit Down With Men and Down With Middle-Class People. Whereas I'm actually very fond of men and am middle-class. I even went to boarding school in Perthshire.

I have two children. They are more fun than anything in the world, and it's more immediate fun than the hard slog of writing.

Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve.

Usually when I'm trying to establish character, I try and find out where they live.