The readers are the ones who let us live our dreams. I try to write books which are really compelling - that you'd take on vacation and rather than going out, you'd read in your hotel room because you had to find out what happened. Hopefully that's what readers are responding to.

This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments - and you get the tears at the end, too.

I don't find any real rivalries with crime and thriller writers anyway. That might sound a little Pollyanna, but for the most part the writers I compete with, if you want to use that word, it's a pretty friendly rivalry. I think we all realise that the boat rises and sinks together.

I remember one time I heard this English professor asking the class what the world's scariest noise is. Is it a man crying out in pain? A woman's scream of terror? A gunshot? A baby crying? And the professor shakes his head and says, 'No, the scariest noise is, you're all alone in your dark house, you know you're all alone, you know that there is no chance anyone else is home or within miles—and then, suddenly, from upstairs, you hear the toilet flush.

I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.

I've never chased the dollar, I've always chased the reader's heart. I love having more readers. The more people who read it, the more thrilled I am.

"So basically, that entire theory is blown to hell."Not basically," Win corrected. "Entirely."