I would change very little because I have been very, very fortunate. A lot of things fell into place for me simply by happenstance. When that happens you don't really want to change anything, even if you could. Editorially my regrets are few and for the most part minor. I look back on my first published book and think I held on to it too long, babied it too long.

How I work is that I write a story I'd like to read. Then you fly to Paris or Sydney and the interviewers talk about the greater significance of your work.

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.

That's the irony in the work: the best stories are the worst things that happen. My best times were somebody else's worst.

I wrote my first real murder story as a journalist for the Daytona Beach News Journal in 1980. It was about a body found in the woods. Later, the murder was linked to a serial killer who was later caught and executed for his crimes.

If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents?

It's only a wonderful world if you can make it that way. There are no street signs pointing to Paradise Road.