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

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

There's a real emphasis on being witty in Scotland, even in crime novels.

People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.

Even if people do wrong, we're social animals, so what can we do about stopping them doing the same things in future? Saying people are 'bad' or 'evil' is just an unwillingness to engage; an unwillingness to try to empathise. That sanctimonious attitude doesn't help anyone

If you went for a job interview in a Glasgow law firm, they used to ask you what school you went to. And that was a way of finding out what religion you were.

Most of the people who write to me are really clever, really engaged. They just want to say that they have read my book and liked it.