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.

Its funny how you can let yourself forget for seconds, how even in the heat of the horrible, you can have moments when you fool yourself into thinking it might all be okay

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.

The first sip of beer on a hot day is like that first finger-dip when you open a new jar of peanut butter.

Trust is like that. You can break it for a good reason. But it still remains broken.

A novel is like a sausage. You might like the final taste but you don't want to see how it was made.