I imagined it. I wrote it. But I guess I never thought I'd see it.

Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.

An awful lot of thriller writers write women rather badly. So just doing it OK gets a lot of credit.

I read mostly fiction, a lot of 19th-century novels.

For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.

The duck swallows the worm, the fox kills the duck, the men shoot the fox, and the devil hunts the men.

Fear could paralyse. Action was the antidote.