I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.

Intensely vivid characters, terrible crimes, and a brutal deep-frozen landscape all prove beyond a reasonable doubt that cold nurtures good and evil as readily as heat ... and that Giles Blunt is a really tremendous crime novelist.

Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

I need a stimulating environment to write because my books are driven at 100 miles per hour at a time.

I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.

Everything you could want - action, suspense, character and setting, all floating on the easy lyricism of a fine writer at the top of his game.