I get asked to read new works a lot, in the hope that I will give a quotation and I will only give a 'puff' for a book I truly love.

We're full of electricity, and the walls and floor of a building contain carbon - the same makeup as a video tape - and I think we give off a huge amount of energy. Some people are able to see that and pick that up. I think almost every person I've met in my life has had some sort of experience that they can't explain, and those fascinate me.

If you and I took a walk down a shopping street in Jo'burg or Cape Town or London, we see two guys looking in a shop window, we think, "Oh, they're wondering what they're going to buy." A cop looks at them and thinks, "Why are they standing there? Are they doing a drug deal? Are they going to mug someone? Are they going to rob the shop?"

If you talk to any cop, however hardened, and say, "Has anything that's ever bothered you", they'll tell you about the death of a child that they had to deal with.

The biggest qualification to be a good police officer is to have a high degree of emotional intelligence.

I think that Brighton, for a crime writer, is almost like a character.

Most good police officers are very open-minded. The bad ones are the ones who are close-minded.