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

As critical acclaim and response has built up, every interview I give is a chance to puncture the myth I've created about my work and refine it.

I am conservative by temperament. I disapprove of criminal activity. I am very solidly and markedly on the side of authority. The truth is I would rather err on the side of too much authority than too little.

Noir is dead for me because historically, I think it's a simple view. I've taken it as far as it can go. I think I've expanded on it a great deal, taken it further than any other American novelist.

Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.

I don't have a cellphone or a computer. I deliberately circumscribe my mental life within the periods that I write about, and the power of Perfidia is that it's the result of complete immersion. I was there for the two years that it took me to write that book.

I needed to address that I've had some profound moral shifts in my own life.