I view people two ways. They're either eye-for-an-eye people or they are turn-the-cheek people.

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more.

Write every day even if it is just a paragraph.

To write more from memory and to be more creative - I think - because I am still writing about Los Angeles but I can't walk out my door and immediately drive to places I am writing about. So I think it has been a very good change for me after 11 books to start writing this way.

I've sold 11 of my books to Hollywood. There are all kinds of my books on shelves in Hollywood because the scripts didn't capture the characters.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

The Chicago Way is a wonderful first novel. Michael Harvey has studied the masters and put his own unique touch on the crime novel. This book harkens the arrival of a major new voice.