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.

Novelisation doesn't imply the truth. Readers are sophisticated enough to know that.

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

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

In the 'Garnethill' trilogy, people always forget that Maureen O'Donnell's dad was a journalist and she did art history at uni and her brother did law, but no-one ever thinks they're middle-class - they're just working class because they speak with accents.

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

My upbringing was middle-class but my parents' families were both working-class so I had this odd combination of working-class background but in a privileged position.