I'm the Jerry Lewis of crime fiction.

A trial is two narratives competing for your attention.

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 love to make even villains people you can relate to. When you find out who did it, I think you almost like the person, which is not easy to do.

Sometimes even when the book is over I dont know whos good and whos bad. Its really more interesting, I think, to write about gray characters than it is to write about black and white.

I'm also inspired by anything that I consider great. It makes me want to raise my game too - Hitchcock movies, Hopper paintings, Springsteen concerts.

..."better to have loved and lost" bullshit. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down.