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.

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

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.

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

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

Journalism is a Darwinian process.

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.