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

I respond very well to rules. If there are certain parameters it's much easier to do something really good. Especially when readers know what those are. They know what to expect and then you have to wrong-foot them. That is the trick of crime fiction. And readers come to crime and graphic novels wanting to be entertained, or disgusted.

I think the negative traits are what makes us love other human beings, the foibles and the flaws.

In prose, leaps of logic can be made while the protagonist thinks about things and arrives at conclusions. Even with voiceover, there's no real way of having an inner voice without it taking over the entire story.

None of us know what is going to sell or what people want to read.

I came from this very traditional background and I benefited hugely from feminism. I felt privileged going to university and doing a PhD. Most people of my background don't get to do that.

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.