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.

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.

Crime is a very hard genre to feminise. If you have a female protagonist she is going to be looking after her mum when she gets older; she is going to be worried about her brother and sister; she will be making a living while bringing up kids.

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

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

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

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