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.

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

Oh, so seldom does fate cast our enemy into our hands, to do with as we will

I just go to lunch. And I never know when something is going into the file and something is not.

I find the idea of vigilante justice very attractive. I like the idea that the murderer decides that this person has gone too far, and nothing will happen to him unless she does something to stop him.

My father read 'The New York Times,' my mother did secretarial work, we had a dog, we had a garden, I had a brother.