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.

There's no question that ghosts exist. The big question for me is whether ghosts are simply electronic imprints left in the walls or the atmosphere of places, or whether they do actually represent something from the afterlife.

I never actually wanted to write horror, oddly enough. It was a kind of misnomer, because I didn't ever actually write horror in the sense of the genre known for it. It was more a type of pigeon-holing in bookshops.

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.

Almost every officer is going to put their life on the line at some point in their career.

There are an awful lot of readers who won't pick up a book if they think it's got anything horrific in it, or paranormal or whatever.