I was extraordinarily lucky. I wrote a book because I wanted to see if I could write a mystery. Someone nagged me into sending it to a contest, which it won, after which I was offered a two-book contract, thus requiring the writing of a second book.

I have always had a particular antagonism for the military.

The Germans and Austrians are very polite, the Swiss are very reserved and the Spanish usually kiss me. The Brits write me letters.

This is a fallen world. People lie, the truth gets distorted, and that's the way it is. What's for dinner ?

Italians know about human nature - they understand human nature perhaps better than anyone else does. They know that people are weak and greedy and lazy and dishonest and they just try to make the best of it; to work around it.

I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline.

The ending is one of my blackest, utterly without hope of any sort.