favors are always for ourselves. Especially when we ask for things for other people.

All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James.

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

favors are always for ourselves. Especially when we ask for things for other people.

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

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 know you shouldn't spit in your own soup but I think most crime writing is like TV and doesn't make enormous demands on one's intellect.