L.A. ispolluted. It's overpopulated. But it is very much home. It was inevitable for me, the moving back. I was living in San Francisco, and Joan broke it off with me, and I needed a place to live. I'd been divorced. And I needed to write movies and TV shows to earn a living. Alimony. All that. So I figured what the hell, I'll go back to L.A.

Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it.

Joe Wambaugh's a friend. I know him only casually, but I like him a lot. I think he likes my books.

Every one of my books is written from the viewpoint of cops, with the exception of my book Killer on the Road, which is written from the viewpoint of a serial killer.

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

And you love to read, you love to escape, right?

If I wanted to make money I would have written another novel.