I've read that it's the smell some carnivores use to find their prey. Imagine the trembling victim trying to hide, but knowing that the smell of its own fear will kill it.

Everything you do leaves traces, doesn't it. The life you've lived is written all over you, for those who can read.

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.

Crime fiction is a genre for writing stories about people - about conflict, about guilt, about passion, about the human condition.

I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books.

I don't think I'll ever feel as famous or as popular as I felt when I was a 17-year-old soccer player in Modle. Only about 20,000 people live there and 12,000 of them come to every game. Running onto the pitch each week was just the most fantastic feeling. Nothing can beat that.

The stock market to me was like a video game. When it went off, it was like turning the game off. It wasn't something I'd think about until I'd turn the machine on again.