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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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