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

Brighton has two universities. It's got a massive young, middle-class community, and the largest gay community in the UK. The result of which is a huge recreational drug market. It's the favoured place to live in the UK for first division criminals.

Every novel starts with a theme, and I am constantly looking for big ideas.

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 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.

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.