A news junkie, I read, daily, the 'Times/Sunday Times,' the 'Guardian/Observer,' 'Mail,' and the 'Argus' - both to keep up with crime in Brighton, where I set my novels, and because I think it is vital to support local papers - they provide a unique accountability for councils, emergency services and so much else, and are dangerously undervalued.

I travel abroad constantly on book promotion and research, and the Internet is invaluable to me for accessing U.K. news in places such as America, which most of the time hasn't heard of England.

My day starts with Radio 4's Today live or 'listen again' wherever I am in the world, thanks to digital radio - I even have an app on my iPhone that receives it.

Every profession has its own culture, but the police look at the world differently to everybody else. I call it a 'healthy culture of suspicion'.

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

Women are afraid of walking at night, that someone pulls them into an alley and rapes them. That almost never happens. I mean, 98% of people who are raped, are raped by somebody they know. Somebody goes too far. But the destruction is just the same.

There are people who can achieve huge success in life, while adding a bit of fun and a splash of colour to this increasingly grey world.