The crime genre's always been regarded very well by the literary end of the book world, whereas horror, although it had that spell in the late eighties, by and large, it's sort of ghetto-ized, and considered to be exploited literature.

The crime genre's always been regarded very well by the literary end of the book world, whereas horror, although it had that spell in the late eighties, by and large, it's sort of ghetto-ized, and considered to be exploited literature.

If you go into a bar or restaurant with a cop, the first thing he does is he'll stand in the entrance, and he'll look at every single face in that room because he doesn't want to spend an hour having a drink or lunch and didn't spot some villain they've been looking for, for two years.

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

There's a difference between what I call a dumb ghost and a smart ghost. The smart ghost is Hamlet's father - you know, he says, "Get revenge, my son!" That's incredibly rare. It's much more the grey lady in the same place everyday, moving across the floor.

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.

I guess a lot of police keep their sanity by developing black humour.