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It is difficult to survive as an author in Sweden, so for commercial success, it is good idea to write crime, get yourself translated, and live happily ever after.

Scandinavian crime fiction has become a great success all across the world and rightfully so. Sjowall and Wahloo ushered in a whole generation of Swedish crime writers, many of whom are now available in English.

With crime fiction, you have to write a half-dozen before they catch on.

I suppose most crime writing is urban. There's not a lot... certainly not in Australia, people don't often set books in the countryside.

Crime is the biggest genre in libraries and in bookshops, and it is hugely varied.

If you want to start reading Swedish crime fiction, you have to start with Sjowall and Wahloo.

It was a bit unimaginable when I began that I'd ever get to 25 books. But it was also unimaginable how much crime-writing would have changed.

My liking for Scandinavian crime fiction led me into exploring literary writers from the same countries.

We wanted to describe society from our Left point of view. Per had written political books, but they'd only sold 300 copies. We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality.

Scottish writers are particularly successful in the crime genre.