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.

Because I write a book a year, I always want to do one other project every year that's stimulating in a different way. It means you can be working but not using up your prose juice, you know?

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.

Usually when I'm trying to establish character, I try and find out where they live.

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

There's always these giant baffling books, like 'The Da Vinci Code.' People say it's not as well written as 'Midnight's Children.' Why aren't people reading 'Midnight's Children?' Nobody knows why these phenomenons happen but they're great.