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Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature.

I never read detective novels. I started out in graduate school writing a more serious book. Right around that time I read 'The Day of the Jackal' and 'The Exorcist'. I hadn't read a lot of commercial fiction, and I liked them.

I read a lot of detective novels.

One important idea I hope is reflected in 'The Poe Shadow' is that fiction can add as much to history as nonfiction does.

What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe or Ambrose Bierce.

I couldn't ever write a straight crime novel: there'd be an intrusion of weirdness at some point.

Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find.

One thing I incorporated in my novel 'The Poe Shadow' was the little-known fact that documents show Poe inherited a slave and decided to free him.

If there was one overarching theme to 'True Detective,' I would say it was that, as human beings, we are nothing but the stories we live and die by - so you'd better be careful what stories you tell yourself.