I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach.

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

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.

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

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

Journalism is a Darwinian process.