There are a lot of Ellroy lifts, man. This guy went to school. But then there's a willful thing that comes over me - God gives it to me - where I go, "That's real nice, let's just go home, pat yourself on the back, good dog, good dog, and wake up in the morning and go to work."

I begin by assembling notes on characters. Large swaths of the plot become clear to me as I do this.

I wanted to portray a newly democratized, enclosed society. I wanted to show how extraordinarily fluid people are in their embrace of other human beings.

There's none with me, although you've seen me before - I'm outrageous.

My guys are morally weak, and they reach toward a tenuous knowledge of self-sacrifice, and sometimes it's too late. I find that moving. It's not a life I'd want to live. But, then, I'm not completely my books.

I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

Well, the clues are there. They always are. Which is why when crimes are solved decades after the fact, it's obvious that the clues had always been right in front of them. A traffic ticket in Brooklyn is how they got ["Son of Sam" serial killer] David Berkowitz. You've just got to look.