Getting into a fight with a popular senior. Pissing off a school teacher and the local chief of police. Hanging with two major-league losers." She slapped my back. "Welcome to high school.

Writers always say, 'I always knew I wanted to be a writer; when I was a three-month-old foetus a pen formed in my hand and I began to scratch my first story on the inside of my mother's womb.' I started later, in my early twenties.

That's what a good crime novelist - any good novelist - should do with you: play with your perceptions while showing you everything in plain sight.

I once worked as a tour guide in the Costa del Sol of Spain.

I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.

I'm thinking of taking up golf, but the idea of spending time with golfers frightens me.

William Goldman's Marathon Man was a novel that taught me about suspense. I was maybe 16 years old when I read it and I remember thinking, "You could put a gun to my head and I wouldn't put this book down." I loved that feeling - and want to give it others.