The crime novel has always been my favourite genre.

I had wanted to write Ghost Country for a long time, but it wouldn't work.

You have to be a ruthless editor of your own prose. Over the years, I've learned that the best way to incorporate research into the narrative is to turn it into action.

White-collar crime gets more outrageous by the second in America.

I always wrote; my first story was published in the magazine The American Girl when I was 11

I began wanting to create a detective who really turned the tables on that image of women, to know that you could have a sex life and not be a bad person. You could have a sex life and still solve your own problems. It was eight years from when I started having the fantasy that I was going to create such a detective to when I actually sat down and came up with V. I. Warshawski. It was a long, slow journey to come to a writing voice and do that character.

My parents were liberal intellectuals but even they expected me to stay at home and look after my younger siblings and do the housework.