Thanks to the success of Henning Mankell and Peter Hoeg, there wasn't the same stigma attached to writing genre thrillers in Scandinavia as there was in many other cultures. Quite the opposite, in fact.

My father grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., with my grandparents. In Norwegian my name is pronounced 'Yoo' but my father used to call me 'Joe.'

My influence is probably more from American crime writers than any Europeans. And I hardly read any Scandinavian crime before I started writing myself. I wasn't a great crime reader to begin with.

I don't have any writing routine. Sometimes I go to my local coffee shop and I write there for some hours. Apart from that, I am traveling most of the time. I write in airports, trains, hotel rooms... I can write anywhere.

To have the chance of being loved we have to take a chance on being destroyed inside

When I propose a candidate for a job I don't do it because the person in question is the best but because he is the one the client will employ. I provide them with a head that is good enough, placed on a body they want. [...] The world is full of people who pay serious money for bad pictures by good artists. And mediocre heads on tall bodies.

I write something that I believe I've made up, and it's only when a friend later points it out to me that I realise I've been writing about myself again.